The Great Geek Manual

1875
Thomas Edison is issued a patent on a “Telegraph Apparatus” (No. 158,787).

1903
The first trans-Atlantic radiotelegraphic message is sent from President Roosevelt to King Edward VII by way of the stations at Cape Cod, Massachusetts and Poldhu, England. It is not generally known whether the message was relayed by ships on the Atlantic or whether it was received directly from Cape Cod in its complete form. A station even larger than the one at Poldhu was begun in 1905, at Clifden, Ireland, and in 1907 this plant and a twin station at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, were opened for limited commercial trans-Atlantic radio service.

1904
Thomas Edison is issued a patent for an “Electrical Automobile” designed with a driving motor that may be conveniently and effectively utilized for the purpose of charging the batteries. (US No. 750,102) The design uses a small turbine steam engine connected to the armature of an electric motor. By reversing the rotation of the motor-armature, the electric motor converts to a generator for charging the batteries. A clutch is used to disconnect the motor from the driving wheels while charging. Under usual operations, the motor runs off storage batteries.
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We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections.

- Niels Bohr, during his first meeting with Werner Heisenberg, 1920.

Art

• Legos and Star Wars have been combined many time. There have even been other Lego Chess Sets, but the Star Wars: A New Hope Lego Chess Set is far and away the most drool-worthy.
• The Milky Way Transit Authority offers up this helpful map to the stars.
• Naldz Graphics has posted a gallery of Stunning Warrior Character Illustrations.
• Sci Fi Wire has found The neurotic Seinfeld version of the Star Wars poster.

Comics

• Interview: Fables’ (most excellent) writer Bill Willingham finds a happy ending despite “that damned Shrek.”
• What does the future hold in store for comics? Will digital tablets be the salvation or damnation of the industry?

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Unfortunately for us, though, the intellectual fate of our historical generation is unlikely to matter much in the long haul. It is our misfortune to live through the largest increase in expressive capability in the history of the human race, a misfortune because surplus always breaks more things than scarcity. Scarcity means valuable things become more valuable, a conceptually easy change to integrate. Surplus, on the other hand, means previously valuable things stop being valuable, which freaks people out. …

The Internet’s primary effect on how we think will only reveal itself when it affects the cultural milieu of thought, not just the behavior of individual users. The members of the Invisible College did not live to see the full flowering of the scientific method, and we will not live to see what use humanity makes of a medium for sharing that is cheap, instant, and global (both in the sense of ‘comes from everyone’ and ‘goes everywhere.’) We are, however, the people who are setting the earliest patterns for this medium. Our fate won’t matter much, but the norms we set will.

- Clay Shirky in “The Shock of Inclusion.”

1836
The first electrical journal in the US, the Electro-Magnetic Intelligencer, is first published.

1838
Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail demonstrate early elements of the telegraph system, including a code which will come to be known as Morse code.

1896
The X-ray machine is exhibited as the “Parisian sensation” to the public for the first time in the US at Casino Chambers in New York City, for twenty-five cents admission.

1903
Guglielmo Marconi’s third North American wireless station in South Wellfleet, Massachusetts, transmits a two thousand word signal, including a message from President Theodore Roosevelt, to the station at Glace Bay, Canada to be forwarded to Poldhu, England, but due to the signal’s strength, it is received directly by England, becoming the first transatlantic radio signal to be transmitted eastward.
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1882
Leroy B. Firman receives the first patent for a telephone switchboard. (U.S. No. 252,576 ) The invention will play a fundamental role in the success of the telephone industry.

Thomas Alva Edison is issued a patent for the carbon microphone for the telephone. (US No. 252,442) The microphone consists of a conducting material, such as carbon, held between metal cups or rings attached to the telephone mouthpiece’s diaphragm. Sound waves cause the diaphragm to change the pressure on the carbon button, which, in turn, causes variation in the electric current passing through the carbon button. The variations correspond to the amplitude and pitch of whatever sound is passing through the mouthpiece.

1938
Howard Aiken submits a formal proposal for the construction of an automatic calculating machine, later known as the Harvard Mark I, to Havard University President J.B. Conant. The proposal includes a history of the computers built by Charles Babbage and Herman Hollerith and a discussion of the features that would be required in a machine intended for scientific calculations.

1949
The Goldbergs, the first sitcom on American television, premieres.
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Information can potentially be extremely dangerous… The effects arising from knowledge can be momentous… Research and education have become like motherhood and apple pie: harmless, wholesome and completely unobjectionable… It behooves us to develop a more reflective and qualified view about the value of knowledge. … Right now, for example, we’re thinking about how to prevent the growing knowledge and power arising from biotechnology from being put to evil ends.

- Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford in “The dangers of a high-information diet,” January 15, 2010.

The very technology that makes our collective integration possible also distracts us from advancing it. In equilibrium, distraction and ambition square off at the singular point of failed progress. If the next generation of Moores, Joys, and Kurzweils are half as distracted as I am, we are going to find ourselves frozen right here, nodes in a wormy borg that never becomes a butterfly. (yeah, I know, worms don’t become butterflies, but I’m desperate to finish…). Anyway, maybe Twitter is just God’s way of making sure we never manage to finish creating our future oppressor.

- “Skinner Box? There’s an App for That” by Jim Stogdill, originally published in O’Reilly Radar on January 4, 2010.