The Great Geek Manual

1913
Bioscope Chronicle (Warwick Trading Co.) first uses an aeroplane for filming of a news event. The plane captures footage of George V leaving on the Royal Yacht for a visit to Paris. The film is rushed back to Hendon for processing and is shown at the Coliseum at 5:20pm the same day.

1951
Whirlwind, the first computer to operate in real-time is first activated. Whirlwind was built at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) by a team lead by Jay Forrester for the US Air Defense System. It’s the first computer to allow interactive computing and to feature a keyboard and a cathode-ray tube visual display. The Whirlwind design will later be developed into SAGE, a comprehensive system of real-time computers used to provide early warnings of air attacks.

1962
The Bell Telephone Company introduces radio paging in the United States. Radio paging was first invented in 1956 at St Thomas’ Hospital in London to alert doctors attending emergencies.

The Seattle World’s Fair (Century 21 Exposition) opens on a seventy-four acre site. It is the first World’s Fair held in the US since World War II. Nearly ten million people attend the fair. Highlights include the unveiling of the Alweg monorail and the Space Needle. Take a cybertour of the exposition at HistoryLink.

1964
At 7:15pm, BBC2 television officially launches the 625-line standard. The announcer holds a candle to symbolize the power outage that delayed the launch the previous evening. The first program aired on the system, Play School, was actually transmitted earlier, at 11:00am in the morning.

1977
An attorney for Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) denies allegations made by Microsoft, responding that MITS is up-to-date on royalty payments, and is not required to license 8080 BASIC to competitors. The conflict will ultimately lead to Microsoft withdrawing its exclusive license in November.

1983
Mattel Electronics introduces the Aquarius computer, with 4KB RAM, 8KB ROM, a Z80A processor, a 40×24 text output to a TV, with 80×72 block graphics, in 16 colors. Price: US$160

1988
Tandy announces THOR-CD, an erasable, re-usable compact disk system for music, video, or data. Delivery of production units is projected to be 18 to 24 months in the future. However, the format will never be commercially viable. The CD-ROM format, which will be incompatible with Tandy’s hardware, will become the dominate format.

In New York, The Tandy Corporation holds a press conference to announce plans to build clones of IBM’s popular PS/2 system computers. The Tandy 5000MC personal computer will feature an 80386 processor and IBM’s Micro Channel bus for around US$4,999-6,999. The conference comes on the heels of IBM’s announcement that it would license patents on key PC technologies. Within five years, IBM clones will become more popular than the original IBM machines themselves.

1989
In Beijing, around a hundred thousand students gather in Tiananmen Square to commemorate Chinese reform leader Hu Yaobang, ignoring the government’s order to disband. The bloodshed in Tiananmen Square has come to symbolize the triumph of the spirit over brute force.

1991
Dutch hackers from Eindhoven in the Netherlands break into US military computers.

1994
The first discovery of extrasolar planets is announced by astronomer Alexander Wolszczan. Wolszczan discovered the planets orbiting pulsar PSR B1257+12 by discovering an irregularity in its radio wave pulses, which would alternately speed up and slow down. He concluded that the gravitational tug of a planet was nudging the pulsar back and forth, changing the duration of the pulses’ travel to Earth by a few milliseconds. His research is published in the journal Science the next day.

1995
The Atari Corporation begins shipping Hover Strike for the Atari Jaguar. Although it’s hardly noticeable except with headphones, the game has reversed the speaker outputs.

1997
A hacker known by the handle “Joka” tricks America Online (AOL) into briefly shutting down a site run by the Texas branch of the Ku Klux Klan for security reasons after AOL had declined to do so earlier in response to widespread criticism to the site’s offensive material.

In the lawsuit brought by Intel, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) agrees to a settlement, agreeing to acknowledge the term “MMX” as an Intel trademark.

1999
Del Rey publishes the science fiction novel Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace by Terry Brooks as a hardcover. (ISBN: 0345427653) It is the novelization of the film of the same name. Length: 324 pages

2000
DailyRadar.com publishes rumors of an upcoming handheld PlayStation game system. According the DailyRadar.com, the device has been named PlayStation Dash and will retail for less than US$100.

NEC Corporation states that it will invest US$2.84 billion to build new memory and Large-Scale Integration (LSI) chip plants in California and Hiroshima, Japan within the next year.

The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 goes into effect. The United States government begins surfing the Web to enforce the first federal statute regarding online privacy. The new law imposes fines in the thousands of dollars on marketers who collect information under the age of thirteen. Read a copy of The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 online at the FTC.

2003
Intel releases the 3GHz Pentium 4 processor with an 800MHz front-side bus. Price: US$417 in 1000-unit quantities

2005
For the first time in US history, a man is arrested for unauthorized residential Wi-Fi access. Benjamin Smith III, age 40, is arrested in Florida for accessing a wireless LAN connection from his parked car. The state law under which Smith was charged prohibits accessing a computer or network knowingly, willfully and without authorization. Read more at TechWorld.

Nintendo releases the Nintendo DS handheld video game system in Japan in two new case colors: Candy Pink and Turquoise Black.

2006
TriStar Pictures releases the horror film Silent Hill, directed by Christophe Gans and starring Radha Mitchell, Sean Bean, Laurie Holden, Jodelle Ferland, and Deborah Kara Unger, to 2,926 US theaters. It is based on the Konami survival horror game Silent Hill. Produced on a budget of US$50 million, it will gross US$20,152,598 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: R) Running Time: 2 hrs

2006
European Space Agency (ESA) scientists publish an analysis of the data returned by the Mars Express data in the journal Science. The article proposes three main geological ages for Mars: the Phyllosian, Siderikian, and Theiikian eras. It further concludes that only during the first proposed era, which occurred between 4.5 until 4.2 thousand million years ago, could the planet have supported any type of life.

In the case of Apple v. Does, the State of California Court of Appeal heard oral arguments over bloggers’ challenges to an effort by Apple Computer to force the ISP of Apple news sites, including AppleInsider and PowerPage, to release the email records of bloggers that the company claims revealed trade secrets. The appeal comes after Apple successfully argued that bloggers should not be afforded the same rights as journalists in the Santa Clara County Superior Court. On May 26, 2006, the California Court of Appeal granted the online journalists’ petition and provided the journalists with protection against Apple’s subpoenas.