The Great Geek Manual

1850
The first U.S. patent for a push-key operated adding machine is issued to Dubois D. Parmelee of New Paltz, New York. (US No. 7,074) His “Calculating Machine” diagram shows nine keys. Each key causes a ratchet to raise a graduated indicator rod at the rear of the device by a corresponding number of notches. The calculator will ultimately be unsuccessful. The first commercially successful calculator will be invented forty years later by William Burroughs.

1861
A patent is issued to Coleman Sellers of Philadelphia for the Kinematoscope, which he describes as an “improvement in exhibiting stereoscopic pictures of moving objects.” (US No. 31,357) The Kinematoscope projects a series of still pictures with successive stages of action mounted on paddle blades through slits passed under the lens of a stereoscope.
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When you’re scientifically literate, the world looks different to you. It’s a particular way of questioning what you see and hear. When empowered by this state of mind, objective realities matter. These are the truths of the world that exist outside of whatever your belief system tells you.

One objective reality is that our government doesn’t work, not because we have dysfunctional politicians, but because we have dysfunctional voters. As a scientist and educator, my goal, then, is not to become President and lead a dysfunctional electorate, but to enlighten the electorate so they might choose the right leaders in the first place.

- “If I Were President…” by Neil deGrasse Tyson, August 21, 2011.
First published by The New York Times.

1847
In Maryland, the first telegraph company is established.

1890
Thomas Edison is issued a patent for the Quadruplex Telegraph. (US No. 420,594) This new telegraph is designed to transmit and receive four independent signals over a single wire, two in one direction and two in the opposite direction. The separate transmitting keys transmit a signal with either a high or low current strength which is then received with sounders that respond only the high or the low strength signal. Read more about the Quadruplex Telegraph at the Edison Papers.
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The ability to store our data externally helps us imagine that our time is limitless, our space infinite. It frees us, in theory at least, from the defining constraints of being human, and sometimes that freaks us out. It strikes me that the current fetishization of analog technology has less to do with nostalgia than it does with an urge to slow down the transfer of data from the internal to the external, from the individual to the collective, and to make it all less instant, less ephemeral, less interchangeable, and more tangible, more linear and more contextual. “People my age are products of a culture of the capital-F Future,” William Gibson said in 2010. “The younger you are, the less you are a product of that. If you’re 15 or so today, I suspect that you inhabit a sort of endless digital Now, a state of atemporality enabled by our increasingly efficient communal prosthetic memory.” Maybe our desire to digitize and archive every little thing is not proof of a fear of forgetting. It’s a manifestation of our urge to remember how to remember.

- “The Dilemma of Being a Cyborg” by Carina Chocano, January 27, 2012.
Originally published by The New York Times.

Art

• Even more (and more) Skyrim Valentines
• If Lego ever releases a line of Zombie sets, they should start with this one.
• Lessons to take away from Star Wars
• Poem is a commercial, but it’s hands-down the most beautiful commercial I’ve seen.
• Why weren’t cheerleaders this cool when I was in school?

Comics

• Interview: The Agony Column interviews Stan Lee
• Interview: CBR takes a looke Behind Buffy Season 9 with Andrew Chambliss.
• Interview: J. Michael Straczynski: ‘I Would Have Absolutely Zero Right To Complain’ About Unauthorized ‘Babylon 5′ Prequels
• News: Stan Lee will appear at the London Super Comic Convention. Excelsior!

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If you know someone that has distanced themselves from friends and family or maybe even lost their job over their Skyrim addition, maybe it’s time to organize an intervention. However, as the following video illustrates, it might not be that simple.

Greg’s family and friends decide it’s time for a Skyrim Intervention in this new video by Ben Moody on Machinima.

1831
The United States Copyright Act is revised to protect printed music. In addition, the term of copyright is extended to twenty-eight years, with a renewal period of fourteen years.

1862
At the age of only fifteen, Thomas Alva Edison, who has been selling candy and newspapers on the train since he was twelve, becomes the first publisher of a newspaper produced and sold on a moving train. He sets up a small press in the baggage car of the Grand Trunk Railroad train that rund between Port Huron and Detroit, Michigan. Obsessed with telegraph technology, he works manages to find a method of getting advance news. His weekly Grand Trunk Herald, a single sheet measuring seven by eight inches, includes local news and advertisements for his father’s store. Before long, Edison becomes renowned as a boy journalist. At its peak, his paper will sell about two hundred copies of his paper a day.

1879
The first demonstration of a practical incandescent filament electric light bulb is given to a seven hundred person audience by its inventor, Joseph Wilson Swan, at the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne. Swan will go on to established the first electric light bulb factory at Benwell in Newcastle.

1966
The United States launches its first operational weather satellite, ESSA-1. The satellite will provide cloud-cover photography to the National Meteorological Center for analysis. The satellite is equipped with solar cells which charge its sixty-three batteries and two cameras were mounted on opposite sides of its cylindrical body.

The unmanned Soviet spacecraft Luna 9 lands safely on the Moon in the Ocean of Storms, three days after its launch. It’s the first rocket-assisted soft landing on any celestial body, and it’s the first space craft to successfully transmit photos from the surface of the Moon. It collects valuable data necessary for later manned missions to the Moon, most notably confirming that the surface is solid rather than a dusty quicksand. Upon striking the surface, the Soviet probe ejected a 250lb capsule with the camera that equipped with a revolving mirror system then enabled the spacecraft to take the valuable photos until February 6, when the craft’s batteries ran out.
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Art

• 21 minimal posters reppin’ techie superheroes
• Art History Through Sci Fi-Colored Glasses
• Skyrim Valentines for your gaming widow.
• Let these zombie-themed sheets serve as a reminder to us all: Never Sleep Alone
• Watch a (cute) girl build a Tardis

Comics

• Interview: Marjorie Liu on ASTONISHING X-MEN and Relationships

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