The Great Geek Manual

1802
The United States Army Corps of Engineers is established by an act of Congress authorizing President Thomas Jefferson to “organize and establish a Corps of Engineers … that the said Corps … shall be stationed at West Point in the State of New York and shall constitute a Military Academy.”

1867
Joseph Lister publishes an article on his discovery of antiseptic surgery in the medical journal The Lancet. The article is the first of a series in which Lister applies Pasteur’s theory that the micro-organisms which cause gangrene might be inhibited chemically. In the articles, he details his successful use of Phenol (carbolic acid) on medical instruments, surgical incisions, and wound dressings to reduce infections.

1919
The wireless telephone is invented, enabling pilots to communicate in flight with each other and the ground for the first time.
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1884
The state of Mississippi approves the first state-supported college for women, the Mississippi Industrial Institute and College. Visit the official Mississippi University for Women website.

1894
Atlanta pharmacist Dr. John Pemberton sells the first bottles of his tonic, Coca-Cola. He creates the liquid in his backyard from a combination of cinnamon, coca leaves, lime, and kola nuts brewed in a brass kettle in an attempt to find an alternative to alcoholic beverages during prohibition. He markets the formula as a brain and nerve tonic for medical use, but he’ll later add carbonated water and sell it as a beverage.

1907
German engineer Alfred Maul is issued a patent for a camera-carrying space rocket capable of carrying and returing photography equipment and scientific instruments. Maul is the same engineer who, in 1904, successfully took aerial photographs of the ground from a height of 2,000 ft. (600m) by attaching cameras to a black powder rocket, thereby creating the first instrumented sounding rocket.
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105 A.D.
In China, Ts’ai Lun, an official of the Han Dynasty Chinese Imperial Court, invents the world’s first paper from a mixture of bamboo, fish nets, mulberry, and rags. He will eventually become wealthy after he present his paper to the Emperor Han Ho Ti.

1702
The first regularly printed English-language newspaper, The Daily Courant is launched by Edward Mallet in London, England. The paper consists of a single sheet with two columns. Printed in the rooms above the White Hart pub on Fleet Street, the paper will run until 1735.

1811
The Luddite riots break out in Nottingham, England. Driven by poverty and insufferable living conditions, a group of laborers launch an assault on the factory where they work, destroying sixty-three lace and stocking manufacturing frames that threaten to render many of their jobs unnecessary. The outbreak occurs in the midst of the Napoleonic Wars, when starvation and unemployment are running rampant across Europe. Over the next three weeks, armed mobs of Luddites will continue to root out the frames, destroying two hundred of the devices in all.
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Ralph Baer is often called the father of video games. His invention, the Magnavox Odyssey, was the first home console system. I photographed and interviewed him this summer as part of my ongoing series on inventors (the book and app for which will be out eventually I promise).

Since he turns 90 years old this week, and this year marks the 40th anniversary of the video game, I chose for this video some bits from our interview in which we talk about, among other things, why he’s still inventing at 90 years old.

1493
Christopher Columbus returns to Spain from his first voyage to the new world, which began on August 3, 1492. The return comes after spending a week in Portugal, where his ship had been blown by a storm during the return trip.

1915
The English Divisional Court of Appeal rules in the case of Ellis v North Metropolitan Theatres Ltd. that local authorities do not have the right to ban cinema exhibitions on Sundays.

1959
At Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, the first US atomic reactor built specifically for medical research, the Brookhaven Medical Research Reactor (BMRR), reaches criticality. The reactor will be decommissioned in December 2000.

1960
The National Observatory at Kitt Peak, Arizona is dedicated. Housing twenty-three telescopes, it is the largest and most diverse gathering of astronomical instruments in the world. Visit the official Kitt Peak National Observatory website.
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Needs all new data

Needs all new data

1781
William Herschel discovers the planet Uranus, but mistakes it for a comet. It is the first planet discovered with the aid of a telescope. By 1787, Herschel will also discover the Uranian satellites Titania and Oberon, which will later be named by his son, John Herschel.

1882
The zoopraxiscope, an optical apparatus invented by Eadweard J. Muybridge to exhibit photographs of moving animals, is demonstrated at the Royal Institution to the Prince of Wales. The zoopraxiscope projects images from rotating glass disks in rapid succession to give the impression of motion. It is essentially the first movie projector, with a sequence of stop-motion silhouette images hand-painted around the edge of a circular glass disk, which is then loaded onto the projector’s side vertically position. In 1893, Muybridge will present his invention at “Zoopraxigraphical Hall” during the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
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