The Great Geek Manual

1841
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe is published by Graham’s Magazine in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It will widely be considered the first detective story. Read the story online at Project Gutenberg.

1876
The first national chemical society in the United States, the American Chemical Society, is organized in New York City. Visit the official American Chemical Society website.

1902
Pierre and Marie Curie isolate one gram of radium, the first sample of a radioactive element. They refined it from eight tons of pitchblende ore.

1926
Western Electric and Warner Bros. introduce Vitaphone, a process to add sound to film.

1939
David Sarnoff, president of Radio Corporation of America (RCA), delivers a speech to an NBC camera announcing the launch of regular public television service with the formal opening of the 1939 New York World’s Fair in Flushing, New York on April 30th. “Now we add radio sight to sound. It is with a feeling of humbleness that I come to this moment of announcing the birth in this country of a new art so important in its implications that it is bound to affect all society. It is an art which shines like a torch of hope in a troubled world. It is a creative force which we must learn to utilize for the benifit of all mankind.” The speech is broadcast by RCA subsidiary NBC to two hundred televisions across the state of New York. Despite its miniscule audience, the event marks the birth of commercial television. By the end of the year, a thousand receivers will be sold in the US. Screens are initially only about five inches across.

1940
The first electron microscope in the United States is demonstrated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The ten foot tall, half a ton apparatus is capable of magnifying an object one hundred thousand times. It was invented by Dr. Vladimir Zworykin at Radio Corporation of America (RCA) laboratories in Camden, New Jersey.

1951
On the popular “See It Now” television show, hosted by journalist Edward R. Murrow, scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) demonstrate the Whirlwind machine, the first computer to operate in real time and to feature video displays. Jay Forrester, the head of the system’s development team, describes the Whirlwind as a “reliable operating system,” running thirty-five hours a week at ninety percent utility using an electrostatic tube memory that stores up to 2,048 sixteen-digit words. The machine uses 4,500 vacuum tubes and 14,800 diodes, taking up a total of 3,100 square feet.

1961
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) gave approves FM stereo broadcasting. However, it will be at least another five years before FM stations grow in popularity. Visit the official FCC website.

1964
The first transcontinental picturephone call is made between the Bell System exhibit at the World’s Fair in New York City and Disneyland in Anaheim, California. The device consists of a telephone handset and a small monitor. The system allows users to see each other as a fuzzy video image as they talk. A three-minute call between the special booths AT&T set up in Chicago, New York, and Washington cost between US$16 and US$27. The system will be offered commercially in Chicago, but it will never become popular.

1967
The NASA lunar lander Surveyor III lands on the surface of the Moon.

1972
Apollo 16 lands on the Moon. It is the tenth manned mission in the Apollo program and the fifth mission to land on the Moon.

1973
The Canadian ANIK A2 becomes first commercial satellite in orbit. Anik is Inuit for “little brother.” The Anik A series of satellites are the world’s first national domestic satellites. Each one carries twelve C-band transponders, each of which has the capacity to transmit a color television channel. Visit the official Anik A website.

1977
Bill Gates and Paul Allen write a letter to Henry Edward Roberts of Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) complaining about MITS’s failure to provide accurate and timely royalty payments on 8080 BASIC, failure to sub-license and promote the product to others, and failure to maintain the non-disclosure terms with third party licensees. Microsoft threatens to terminate their exclusive licensing agreement for 8080 BASIC in ten days if the situation isn’t remedied. The company will ultimately carry out their threat in November.

1979
The film Dawn of the Dead, the sequel to Night of the Living Dead, directed by George A. Romero is released in US theaters. Despite the limitations of seventies filmmaking technology, inconvenient late-night schedules, and budgetary constraints, the film will become one of the most financially successful horror films in history, in terms of cost versus profit, largely due to its international market. It is one of the first films to be edited in different way to suit different markets. For example, Italian producer Dario Argento edited the movie to achieve a story with considerably less character development and a much faster pace, whereas Romero’s definitive cut, is peppered with humor and cultural satire. IMDB listing

1982
Gabriel Industries, a division of CBS/Columbia, announces a four-year agreement with Bally Manufacturing to market home video game versions of Bally arcade games.

International Business Machines (IBM) opens its first personal computer product center store in New York City. Visit the official IBM website.

Timex Computer and Sinclair Research announce an agreement for Timex to market a 2KB version of the ZX81 as the Timex/Sinclair 1000 in North America. The computer includes a keyboard and hooks up to a television set. Timex expects to ship the system in July for US$99.95. It is the first personal computer to sell for less than US$100. Weight: 12oz

1983
According to Twin Galaxies, Allen Rager scores a record-setting 8,203,510 points playing the Bally Midway arcade game Tron at the Video Land arcade in Millington, Tennessee. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

1989
The Discovery Channel launches in Europe on a schedule of six hours of programming a day, transmitted from the Intelsat V satellite to cable systems in the UK and Scandinavia. Visit the official European Discovery Channel website.

1990
The Hubble Space Telescope is launched from the Space Shuttle Discovery. (STS-31) Visit the official NASA website for the Hubble Telescope.

1992
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Cost of Living” first airs. (No. 520) In it, Lwaxana Troi comes aboard to marry a man whom she has never met. Memory Alpha entry

1993
Version 0.8 of NetBSD, an open source version of the Unix-derivative BSD computer operating system, is released. It is the first official release of the operating system, which was derived from version 0.1 of the 386BSD operating system. NetBSD was developed to focus on multi-platform support. Visit the official NetBSD website.

1994
The NASA Space Shuttle Endeavour lands at the conclusion of a mission chronicled by the Discovery Channel. (STS-59)

WebCrawler, the first full text search engine, is launched. The search engine was created by Brian Pinkerton while at the University of Washington. On June 1, 1995, it will be acquired by America Online (AOL), and on April 1, 1997, it will be sold to Excite. Visit the official WebCrawler website.

1995
Commodore International sells its remaining assets to ESCOM, a German-based company for an amount between US$10 to US$12.5 million. Soon after ESCOM will fall into receivership.

1996
The developers of AdeptXBBS, an OS/2 bulletin board system (BBS), announce that they will release a sixteen node freeware version and discontinue online support for the software after determining that the BBS is no longer a viable commercial product.

1998
The COMDEX Spring ‘98 and Windows World shows are held at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois, over four days. At the event, Bill Gates gives a public demonstration of Windows 98, during which his assistant, Chris Capossela, crashes the operating system while connecting a scanner to the computer in an attempt to demonstrate the system’s support for Plug and Play devices. Gates’ response to the incident is to quip, “That must be why we’re not shipping Windows 98 yet.” Visit the official COMDEX website.

1999
The Iomega Corporation announces an agreement to integrate an Iomega Zip 100 Megabyte drive into the Sega Dreamcast video game system. Visit the official Iomega website.

On the 110th birthday of Adolf Hitler, Eric David Harris, age 18, and Dylan Bennett Klebold, age 17, kill twelve fellow students and one member of the faculty at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Just nineteen days before their graduation, the two boys hold their school hostage for hours, roaming the halls, spraying bullets, and tossing pipe bombs in a manner paralleling popular first-person shooters (FPS) such as Doom, Duke Nukem, Half-Life, Quake, and Unreal. At 11:19am, two pipe bombs Harris and Klebold had set in an open field several blocks away explodes. It is timed to distract the police. At the same time, Harris and Klebold begin firing on students sitting outside the cafeteria. Two large propane bombs planted in the cafeteria and timed to explode at 11:17am, just as it would be reaching peak capacity, fail to detonate. The two had initially planned to stand outside the cafeteria and pick off students fleeing the aftermath of the detonations. Between 12:05 and 12:08, Harris and Klebold enter into the south side of the library and shoot themselves in the head. However, the building won’t be secured by the SWAT team dispatched to the scene until nearly 4:00pm. During the course of what will be called the Columbine High School massacre, the two gunmen injured twenty-four students aside from the thirteen they killed. By Tuesday evening, America Online (AOL) will shut down access to Harris’ website at members.aol.com/rebdomine, where he had posted apocalyptic images, bomb diagrams, and poetry.

The United States Patuxent River Naval Air Station is spammed with “Serbia is here” email by an unknown Belgrade hacker.

2000
Compaq announces an alliance with Sears Roebuck and Company to offer the Presario line of personal computers in 860 Sears stores in the US. The deal includes a number of models configured for exclusive distribution through Sears.

The website of Jewish Online UK is hacked anonymously. View an archived version of the defaced website.

2001
Dell computers becomes the largest personal computer manufacturer. Visit the official Dell website.

Napster announces an agreement to license fingerprinting technology that may help thwart users’ ongoing attempts to distribute copyrighted material (usually mp3 formatted music) by renaming files.

2004
Gravity Probe B is launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County, California. The mission of the probe is to confirm part of Einstein’s theory of relativity. The physics experiment, developed by Lockheed Martin and Stanford University, will make observations of the magnitude five star IM Pegasi for over a year, measuring minute shifts in the orientation of the spacecraft’s four gyroscopes, which are effected by the Lense-Thirring gravitomagnetic effect, otherwise known as “frame-dragging.” The satellite will also take accurate measurements of the gravitostatic warping of spacetime by the Earth’s mass. Visit the official NASA website for the Gravity Probe B.

Rockstar Games releases the third-person horror game Manhunt for Windows and the XBox in the US. The game will be banned in several countries, and it will be blamed by the media for causing a murder in the UK, despite police statements to the contrary. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: M (Mature)

2005
The Google search engine begins offering its users custom account through which they will be able to review and search their own personal query search.

Version 4.0 of the Scientific Linux, also known as Beryllium, is released. Visit the official Scientific Linux website.

2006
An attempt to raise the orbit of the International Space Station (ISS) is canceled when a rocket engine fails to reach its correct configuration.

Sony reduces the price of the PlayStation 2 video game system from US$149.99 to US$129.99 (CAN$139.99).

Version 5 of MetaBB phpBB forum is released. Visit the official MetaBB website.

2007
Life magazine publishes the last issue of its print edition. All future issues of the magazine will be published on the Internet. At its height, the weekly magazine boasted a circulation of upwards of 13.5 million, and it could trace its roots back to its founding in 1883, though it was updated and relaunched on several occasions. Its discontinuation marks hard times for print publications around the globe, as readers increasingly turn to the internet for their news and entertainment.

Rogue Pictures releases the action comedy Hot Fuzz, directed by Edgar Wright and starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, to 825 US theaters. The film is a spoof on the buddy cop genre. Produced on a budget of £8 million, it will gross US$5,848,464 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating:R) Running Time: 2 hrs

William Phillips barricades himself in the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas with a handgun. Phillips will hold the hostage for three hours before killing one hostage, injuring another, and committing suicide in what will later be called the Johnson Space Center Shooting.