This is Aperture
The full music-video for ‘This Is Aperture’ – a Portal-style remake of ‘This Is Halloween’ from The Nightmare Before Christmas.
This Day in Geek History: January 30
1873
Pierre-Jules Hetzel publishes Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne in French. Download it at Project Gutenberg.
1883
James Ritty and John Birch a U.S. patent for the first cash register.
1910
Georges Rignoux of La Rochelle, France describes a primitive “television” system using a matrix of sixty-four photocells to producing a limited grey scale picture. Rignoux had developed the system over the course of several months, with several successful practical experiments, including the first demonstration of the instantaneous transmission of black and white still images in 1909.
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This Day in Geek History: January 29
1595
Many historians believe that this is the date on which the William Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet is first performed.
1802
John J. Beckley became the first Librarian of the U.S. Congress. Visit the official website of the Library of Congress.
1845
The Edgar Allen Poe poem “The Raven” is published in the New York Evening Mirror for the first time anywhere.
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This Day in Geek History: January 28
1807
Pall Mall in London becomes the first street in the world to be lit by gaslight.
1878
The first commercial telephone exchange in the world is installed in New Haven, Connecticut to serve twenty-one subscribers connected by a single strand of iron wire. For the first six weeks, the exchange won’t be operated at night. The first experimental message sent over the system is “Ahoy, ahoy.” The first operator is George W. Coy. A Bell franchise had been awarded for New Haven and Middlesex Counties to Coy on November 3, 1877, paid for by incorporating the system into a company with two financial partners. Coy improvised the first crude switchboard, building it from carriage bolts, handles from teapot lids and bustle wire. The concept of interconnecting phone wires had been tried before by three other men, but none of them had operated commercially. Click here to view the original patent application for the telephone exchange.
The Yale Daily News becomes the first daily college newspaper in the United States.
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This Day in Geek History: January 27
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.
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This Day in Geek History: January 26
1697
Isaac Newton receives and solves Jean Bernoulli’s brachistochrone problem. The swiss mathematician Bernouilli had challenged his colleagues to solve it within six months. Newton not only solved the problem before going to bed the night after the challenge had been issued, but in doing so, he invented the new branch of mathematics called “calculus of variations.” Newton will publish the solution anonymously, but the brilliant work makes his identity obvious, and when Bernoulli saw the solution he is famously quoted as saying, “We recognize the lion by his claw.”
1886
Karl Benz patents the first automobile powered by an internal combustion engine. The first public test-drive of the actual vehicle will be on July 3, 1886 in Mannheim, Germany. The one-cylinder engine has a top speed of 10 mph (16km/h).
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This Day in Geek History: January 25
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 his colleague 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.
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Free Fiction Round-Up: January 24, 2012
Audio Fiction and Podcasts
- Listen to “All the Painted Stars” by Gwendolyn Clare at Clarkesworld.
- Listen to “The Ballad of Delphinium Blue” by Samantha Henderson.
- Listen to “Beautiful Dreamer” by Edward McKeown (Part 2) at Beam Me Up.
- Listen to “Biba Jibun” by Eugie Foster at Pseudopod.
- Listen to “Fruit Jar Drinkin’, Cheatin’ Heart Blues” by Patty Templeton.
- Listen to “Martian V F W” by Vandenburg at The Drama Pod.
- Listen to “Scattered Along the River of Heaven” by Aliette de Bodard.
- Listen to “Surviving the eBookalypse” by Randy Henderson at Escape Pod.
- Listen to “What Everyone Remembers” by Rahul Kanakia at Clarkesworld.
