The Great Geek Manual

Some people celebrate DNA Day today to commemorates the anniversary of the publication of Watson and Crick’s 1953 article on the structure of DNA.

1935
The first round-the-world telephone call is made when Walter S. Gifford, president of the AT&T Company, talks with T.G. Miller, vice president in charge of the Long Lines Department, in another room in the same building (32 Sixth Avenue) over a 23,000 mile circuit of wire and radio channels. The phone used in the call will later be preserved at the Smithsonian Institute.

1939
DC Comics debuts what will become its second major superhero, Batman, in issue 27 of Detective Comics (the May issue).

1953
The journal Nature publishes the one page article Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid written by Francis Crick and James D. Watson. In it, Crick and Watson reveal the double helix structure of DNA and explains how DNA transmits hereditary information between cells and generations. Their work will earn them a Nobel Prize in 1962.

“This structure has two helical chains each coiled around the same axis… Both chains follow right-handed helices… The novel feature of the structure is the manner in which the two chains are held together by purine and pyrimidine bases… They are joined together in pairs, a single base from one chain being hydrogen-bonded to a single base from the other chain, so that the two lie side by side with identical z-co-ordinates.”

1961
Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor is granted a patent for a “Semiconductor Device-and-Lead Structure,” the integrated circuit, even as it considered the application of Jack Kilby. (US No. 830,507) The patent will precipitate a prolonged controversy between Noyce and Kilby over the rights to the patent. Kilby had recorded his initial ideas concerning the integrated circuit in July 1958, a half year before Noyce, but Noyce had solved most of the practical problems that Kilby had not. Noyce’s chip was constructed of silicon, while Kilby’s chip was made of germanium. Integrated circuits will eventually replace transistors in computers, allowing the machines to be manufactured in increasingly smaller sizes.

1980
Activision is founded as the first third-party software company for video game consoles by David Crane, Larry Kaplan, Jim Levy, Alan Miller, and Bob Whitehead. Four of the founders are former Atari employees who felt that they were not receiving enough recognition for their programming genius.

The Associated Press begins Videotex Wire transmissions. Videotex is an interactive information service with superficial similarities to the Internet.

1983
American schoolgirl Samantha Smith is invited to visit the Soviet Union by its leader Yuri Andropov after he received a letter from her in which she expressed fears about nuclear war.

Pioneer 10 crosses beyond the orbit of Pluto, to continue its voyage into the universe beyond the solar system.

Texas Instruments, Inc. (TI) begins giving away US$300 Peripheral Expansion Modules with the purchase of any three qualified TI-99/4a compatible computer products, including a 32K Memory Expansion card, a Disk Controller card, a Disk Drive, Mulitplan, a p-Code card, an RS232 card, and TI Writer. Visit the official Texas Instruments website.

1988
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Skin of Evil” first airs. (No. 123) In it, a cruel entity takes Troi hostage after her shuttle crashes, and it kills Lieutenant Yar during the attempted . Memory Alpha entry

1990
The crew of the Space Shuttle Discovery deploy the US$2.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope. The telescope, which is deployed seven years behind schedule and nearly US$2 billion over budget, will be found to have flawed optics. Only image correction software keeps the telescope useful until repairs can be carried out late in 1993. Visit the official NASA website for the Hubble Telescope.

1994
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Firstborn” first airs. (No. 721) In it, Worf struggles to convince his son, Alexander, to honor his heritage as a Klingon warrior. Memory Alpha entry

1996
Yahoo! begins advertising their web-based search service on national television. The ads, which feature the tag line “Do You Yahoo?”, first air during Late Night with David Letterman, Saturday Night Live, and Star Trek.

Yahoo! launches Yahooligans!

1999
Over seventy thousand mourners gather in Littleton, Colorado to commemorate the deaths of the victims of the Columbine High School massacre, which occurred five days earlier. Vice President Al Gore addressed those gathered, saying, “All of us must change our lives to honor these children… More than ever, I realize every one of us is responsible for all of the children.”

2000
Reprise Records releases the music album Silver & Gold by Neil Young. The album’s cover art was shot with a Game Boy Camera.

2001
Sun Microsystems announces project JXTA, an open-source platform that will provide a basic framework for building peer-to-peer applications. The platform is a set of XML protocols that will allow devices connected to a network to collaborate and exchange messages regardless of the network’s topology. JXTA is designed to allow a wide range of devices, including personal digital assistants, personal computers, mainframes, and cellphones to communicate in a decentralized manner. Visit the official JXTA website.

2002
Soyuz TM-34 is launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome with South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth aboard on a mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Shuttleworth paid £15 million to participate in the mission. He will spend eight days on the space station assisting in research related to AIDS and the human genome. He is the world’s second space tourist and the first African in space. Visit Mark Shuttleworth’s homepage.

2005
By applying a small charge to bacteria in a hydrogen biomass generator, environmental engineers at Pennsylvania State University increase its output four fold. Producing energy while cleaning water could lead to a significant reduction in the cost of treating wastewater in the future. Read the original news story at Penn State Live.

The film Casshern, based on the 1973 anime television series, Shinzo Ningen Kyashan, is released to theaters in the UK. The film is among the first feature-length live action films to be shot on a digital backlot, with the actors performing in front of a greenscreen and all but the simplest stage elements added in post-production. The film was produced on a budget of US$6 million. Visit the official Casshern website. IMDB listing Running Time: 2 hrs 21 mins

Microsoft releases the Windows XP Professional x64 Edition operating system, otherwise known as Windows NT 5.2, for 64-bit systems. The OS is designed to use the expanded 64-bit memory address space provided by the x86-64 architecture. Visit the official Windows XP Professional x64 Edition website.

2006
The computer-animated film Final Fantasy VII Advent Children, based on the highly successful PlayStation game, Final Fantasy VII, is released to United States theaters. IMDB listing MPAA Rating: PG-13 Running Time: 1 hr 41 mins

NeoOffice 2.0 Alpha for the PowerPC is released. NeoOffice is a port of the open source office suite, OpenOffice.org, for the Mac OS X. Visit the official NeoOffice website.

A report by Niko Partners predicts that the video game market in China will reach US$2.1 billion in sales by 2010.

2007
Astronomers announce the discovery of an Earth-like exoplanet Gliese 581 c, which may support liquid water and is potentially habitable. The planet orbits the star Gliese 581, 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra. Gliese 581 c was identified using the 3.6m Telescope at the European Southern Observatory (Eso) facility in La Silla, Chile. Read more at the BBC.