The Great Geek Manual

1698
Thomas Savery patents the first steam engine.

1858
The Donati Comet was first seen and named after its discoverer.

1875
While Alexander Bell and his assistant Thomas Watson are working on Edison’s “harmonic telegraph,” they stumble upon the inspiration that will eventually lead to the creation of the first telephone. In the transmitter room, Watson produces a twang while trying to free a reed that had been wound too tightly to the pole of its electromagnet. Bell, working in the receiving room, hears the twang and realizes that his dream of speech transmission must be possible, because the complex overtones and timbre of the twang he had just heard bore a striking similarity to the sound of the human voice.

1889
A hydroelectric power plant generates alternating current electricity available to consumers for the first time. A thirteen mile power line links the Willamette Falls Electric Co. power plant to Portland, Oregon. Two 300hp Stilwell & Bierce waterwheels together drove a single phase, 720 kilowatt generator. It isn’t the first hydroelectric power plant. Another one had been demonstrated in Appleton, Wisconsin, on September 30, 1882 with a small dynamo. It is the use of alternating current that makes this station significant because it makes it possible to transmit power over great distances.
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1874
After much preparation at home and abroad, the Philadelphia Zoo, the first zoological gardens in the United States opens to the public with several hundred native and exotic specimens on the grounds of Solitude, the last estate in the area owned by the Penn family, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was originally chartered by the Pennsylvania state legislature on March 21, 1859 as the Zoological Society of Philadelphia whose core purpose is to oversee “the purchase and collection of living wild and other animals” and “for the instruction and recreation of the people.” Rumors of a civil war make it a difficult time for private undertakings, and delayed the opening. In 1875, this zoo will become the first US zoo to exhibit a male Indian rhinoceros.

1881
The first international telephone call is made between Calais, Maine in the United States and St. Stephen, New Brunswick in Canada.

1886
The first Linotype machine to be put into commercial use in the US is installed at the Tribune newspaper in New York City. It will be immediately successful. By the end of 1886, a dozen of the machine will be put to use by the Tribune. Within a decade, thousands of Linotype machines will be in use around the world. With a Linotype machine one keyboard operator can cast a line of type at a time, doing the work of the three men required to hand-set the type of other printing presses. It is because the machine sets type one line at a time that Whitelaw Reid, the editor of the New York Tribune, gave the Linotype its name. The machine was invented, patented, and improve by Ottmar Mergenthaler.
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1879
The first electric company in the US to produce and sell electricity California Electric Light Company is established in San Francisco, California.

1905
Albert Einstein publishes the article “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies“, wherein he introduces the concept of special relativity.

1908
At around 7:15am, northwest of Lake Baikal, Russia, a huge fireball nearly as bright as the Sun is seen crossing the sky. Minutes later, there is a huge flash and a shock wave felt up to 400 miles (650km) away. Over Tunguska, a meteorite traveling at over 60,000mph (25km per second) penetrates Earth’s atmosphere, heats to about 10,000°C, and detonates 3 to 4 miles (6 to 10km) above the ground. The blast releases the energy of 10-50 Megatons of TNT, destroying 830 square miles (2,150 sq km) of forest (approximately 80 million trees) and leaving no trace of life. The Tunguska rock came out of the Taurid Meteor storm that crosses Earth’s orbit twice a year. Read more about The Tunguska Event.

1930
The first US broadcast to be transmitted globally takes place, using a series of short-wave radio relays with only a one-eighth of a second delay. The broadcast, a live oration from Clyde D. Wagoner, originates at station W2XAD in Schenectady, New York.
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512
A solar eclipse is recorded by a monastic historian in Ireland.

1613
The original Globe Theatre in London, England burns down accidentally when a cannon discharged during a performance of William Shakespeare’s Henry VIII sets fire to the building’s thatched roof.

1888
Edison’s foreign sales agent, Colonel George Gouraud, makes a wax cylinder recording in the Crystal Palace, London of a four thousand person choir performing Handel’s Israel in Egypt at a distance of more than one hundred yards from the phonograph. It is the first known recording of classical music.

1929
Construction of the first high-speed jet wind tunnel is completed at Langley Field, California, the field laboratory of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. Preliminary design work began November 14, 1928. The tunnel is capable of producing wind speeds of about 600mph, permitting the testing of aerofoils. Read more about the history of wind tunnels at the US Centennial of Flight Commission and NASA websites.
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1928
Austrian Friedrich Schmiedl launches his first experimental rocket. Though his first rocket design isn’t successful, on September 9, 1931, Schmiedl will operate the world’s first official postal rocket-mail service in Austria using a V-7 rocker, until laws prohibiting the civilian use of explosives are passed.

1938
A 450 metric ton meteorite strikes the Earth in an empty field near Chicora, Pennsylvania.

1955
The HMTS Monarch sets out from Clarenville, Newfoundland laying the first submarine transatlantic telephone cable system, TAT-1. On September 26th, the Monarch will reach the Firth of Lorne in Oban, Scotland.

1956
The first atomic reactor built for the purpose of private research goes into operations in Chicago, Illinois.

1965
The first commercial communications satellite, “Early Bird,” goes into commercial service, relaying a commercial telephone conversation over a satellite between America and Europe for the first time. Early Bird has a capacity for 240 voice circuits capacity or one black and white television channel. The satellite will later be renamed Intelsat I.
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1847
New York and Boston are linked by telegraph wires.

1885
Chichester Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter apply for a patent which will be granted on May 4, 1886 for a phonograph-type apparatus called the graphophone. (US No. 341,214) The device improves on Thomas Edison’s principles by specifying cardboard discs coated with wax in which a vibrating style cuts a narrow spiral groove. Bell and Tainter decide to use cylinders rather than discs while still employing hill-and-dale inscribing rather than the lateral-cut.

1898
The first solo circumnavigation of the globe is completed by Joshua Slocum from Briar Island, Nova Scotia aboard his sloop-rigged fishing boat that he named Spray.

1923
John Logie Baird runs an advertisement in The Times personal column. “Seeing by Wireless—inventor of apparatus wishes to hear from someone who will assist (not financially) in making working model.” His experiments are being conducted at 21 Linton Crescent, Hastings, Sussex.
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1870
Christmas is declared a federal holiday in the United States.

1894
Karl Benz of Germany is granted the first US patent for a gasoline-driven automobile.

1948
William Shockley files the original patent for his grown junction transistor, the first bipolar junction transistor.

1970
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announces its plans to regulating the cable television industry. Most notable among the regulation is the ban on the three major broadcasting networks from entering the cable television market and a prohibition on the joint ownership of cable and broadcast television operations in the same community.

1974
At 8:01am, a Universal Product Code (UPC) label is used to ring up purchases at a supermarket for the first time. The first UPC ever scanned is on a package of Wrigley’s chewing gum, which is purchased at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio. Developed by International Business Machines (IBM) and approved for use in 1973, the code is a twelve-digit bar code that numerically representing the manufacturer and and the product which can be read by a laser beam. One of the developers of the UPC, Norman Joseph Woodland, was inspired by Morse code.
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1638
A lunar eclipse becomes the first astronomical event recorded in the United States.

1783
Antonie Lavoisier announces to the French Academy of Sciences that water is the product of the combination of hydrogen and oxygen. However, this discovery was made earlier by the English chemist Henry Cavendish.

1876
The first public demonstration of Bell’s speaking telephone is given at the Centennial Exhibition, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1925
Warner Bros. forms the Vitaphone Company in partnership with Western Electric to develop and exploit sound-on-disc technology for cinemas. Development work takes place at the Vitagraph Studio in Brooklyn, New York, under an eleven person team from Bell Telephone Labs under British-born Stanley S A Watkins.
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1775
The first American-made book, entitled Impenetrable Secret, is advertised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The book is printed and sold by Story and Humphreys. Their advertisement in the Pennsylvania Mercury announces that the book is “printed with types, paper and ink manufactured in this Province.”

1868
Christopher Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden, and Samuel W. Soule of Milwaukee, Wisconsin are granted a patent for the “Type-Writer.” (US No. 79,265) The device is only equipped with capital letters and typists can’t tell if they were making errors because the paper can’t be seen as one is typing; however, it is the first practical device of its kind. It is described as an improvement upon their earlier type-writing machine, which they had filed an application for on October 11, 1867. The new features are “a better way of working the type-bars, of holding paper on the carriage, of holding, applying, and moving the inking-ribbon, a self-adjusting platen, and a rest or cushion for the type-bars to follow.” The device also features the QWERTY keyboard which will be used for typing for decades to follow.

1926
The College Board administers the first SAT exam.

1928
In Germany, a rocket-powered automobile built by Opel crashed during testing after reaching a speed of 156mph.

1931
Aviators Wiley Hardeman Post and Harold Gatty took off from New York on the first flight around the world in a single-engine plane.
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June 21st is the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere and the winter solstice in the southern hemisphere.

1768
The first commencement of a US medical college is held at the College of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. Its Department of Medicine was established in 1765 and was the first medical school in the United States.

1808
French chemist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac announces the isolation of the element Boron, nine days ahead of Englishman Humphry Davy, who independently separated boron and made his own announcement on June 30, 1808.

1851
Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzk play a recreational game of chess, which, by virtue of a series of bold sacrifices, goes down in history as the immortal game, one of the greatest games in chess literature. In the course of the game, Anderssen sacrifices both of his rooks as well as his queen before finally checkmating his opponent with his three remaining minor pieces.

1889
British photographer William Friese-Greene receives a patent for the first cinematograph camera specifically designed to make use of perforated celluloid films, though it only shoots film at a rate of four or five frames per second.

1893
The first Ferris wheel is premiered at Chicago’s Columbian Exposition, America’s third World’s Fair. It was invented by George Washington Ferris, a Pittsburgh bridge builder as an attraction similar to the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. Ferris’ design features a web of cables rather than rigid spokes in the wheel’s center and two 140 foot steel support towers. It stands 264 feet tall. Each of its thirty-six cars has a sixty passenger capacity, with a one hundred fifty ton total capacity. Its cars and wheels weigh 2,100 tons without passengers, and the levers and other associated machinery required to turn the wheel weigh another 2,200 tons. Its forty-five foot axle is the single largest piece of forged steel in the world. The ride cost fifty cents and made US$726,805.50 during the World’s Fair.
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1214
The University of Oxford receives its chartered.

1840
Samuel F.B. Morse receives a patent for his telegraphy signals, known as Morse code. (US No. 1,647)

1877
Alexander Graham Bell installs the world’s first commercial telephone service in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. In the first month, Bell will sell only six telephones. By September, 778 telephones will be in use.

1926
Herr Schaetzle demonstrates a wireless phone for automobiles in Berlin, Germany.

1939
Ernst Heinkel tests the world’s first aircraft to be propelled solely by a liquid-fueled rocket, the He-176 experimental rocket airplane, flies for first time in Peenemunde, Germany. It’s powered by an engine based on Hellmuth Walter’s hydrogen peroxide-based rocket and piloted by Erich Warsitz. It’s a small aircraft, without an enclosed canopy, built almost entirely out of wood with a fixed, tricycle undercarriage. The fifty second flight of the He-176 isn’t spectacular, but it does provide a “proof of concept” for rocket propulsion. Read more at Luft 46.
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240 BC
Greek astronomer and mathematician Eratosthenes calculates the circumference of the Earth. As director of the great Library of Alexandria, he read in a papyrus book that in Syene, the shadows of temple columns grew shorter as the hour approached noon on the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. At noon, the shadows disappeared altogether because the sun was directly overhead. However, on the same day, a stick in Alexandria, to the north of Syene, casts a pronounced shadow. After learning about the shadows in Syene, Eratosthenes realizes that the surface of the Earth couldn’t be flat and that the more its surface curved, the greater the difference in the length of shadows between different locations would be. Eratosthenes calculated that the distance between the two locations was one fiftieth of a full 360-degree circle. He then estimated the distance between the two locations and calculated the planet’s circumference by multiplying the distance by fifty. The calculation would later prove to be remarkably accurate.

1910
The first Father’s Day is celebrated by the city of Spokane, Washington, though it was first observed on a smaller scale on July 5, 1908 by the Williams Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church in Fairmont, West Virginia.

1911
The first state film censorship board in the United States is established in Pennsylvania.

1914
A radiotelegraphic link is established between Germany and the United States, and German Emperor Wilhelm II and US President Woodrow Wilson exchange telegrams to mark the event.
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Today, June 18, is Phi Day! Like Pi, Phi, also known as the Golden Ration, is an irrational number, equal to approximately 1.61803398874989484820458683436564. Phi is used a great deal in astronomy, but it’s found everywhere you look here on Earth, from architecture to shells and even the human body. Most importantly, it’s found in the proportions in the Greeks’ famous golden rectangle, and it’s derivable by many proofs, including the famous Fibonacci Sequence.

1858
Charles Darwin receives an academic paper from Alfred Russel Wallace that draws conclusions regarding evolution nearly identical to those Darwin made himself. The concurring opinion prompts Darwin to publish his own theory of evolution.
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1837
Charles Goodyear obtains his first rubber-processing patent. (US No. 240) India rubber would become sticky in the summer heat. Goodyear resolved this problem by devising a process to treat the rubber with metallic solutions such as copper nitrate and strong acid for a few minutes, before washing it with water. His patent explains the method and the use of a water paste of quicklime to bleach the rubber for various purposes. He obtains additional patents as he continued to revise his process using sulphur and oil of turpentine.

1867
Joseph Lister of Glasgow, Scotland becomes the first surgeon to perform surgery under antiseptic conditions.

1885
The Statue of Liberty is delivered to New York Harbor.

1901
The College Board introduces its first standardized test, which will become the forerunner of the SAT.

1922
The idea of a radio network, conceived of as a public service, is proposed in a letter from David Sarnoff to E.W. Rice Jr., Honorary Chairman of the Board ofGeneral Electric Company. Rather than a public service, the first network will evolve into the National Broadcasting Company (NBC).
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