The Great Geek Manual

This Day in Geek History: April 4

4 Apr 2008 Geek History

1877
A pianist performs in Philadelphia, while an audience enjoys the performance in New York. The event is an important early demonstration of Alexander Graham Bell’s new invention, the telephone.

1914
The first episode of the silent film serial The Perils of Pauline premieres in New York. The cliffhanger serials shown in weekly installments feature Pearl White, a perpetual damsel in distress, as the title character. She is menaced by assorted villains, including pirates and Native Americans. At the end of each installment she is generally placed in a situation that looks sure to result in her imminent death. The start of the next episode shows how she is rescued or otherwise escapes the danger, only to face fresh peril again.

1930
The American Interplanetary Society (AIAA) is founded in New York City by G. Edward Pendray, David Lasser, and Laurence Manning, and nine others, for the “promotion of interst in and experimentation toward interplanetary expeditions and travel.” It will become known the American Rocket Society on April 6, 1934. Through the thirties, the group will design an experimental test stand and tested liquid-fueled rockets. Their pioneering experiments will lay the ground work for the United States space program. Their ARS-4 will be the first rocket launched in America to break the sound barrier on September 9, 1934. In early 1963, the society will merge with the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).

1958
Peace Sign At a British ban-the-bomb rally, the peace symbol is used for the first time. The symbol is an amalgamation of two flag semaphores, one for the letter “N” and one for the letter “D.” The letters N and D are intended to stand for “nuclear disarmament.” It was created by British graphic designer Gerald Holtom, a conscientious objector, and he will choose not to trademark the symbol so that it may be used freely in future protests. Read more at the website for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

1968
NASA launches Apollo 6, the second and last unmanned test flight of its Saturn V launch vehicle.

1969
Dr. Denton Cooley implants the first temporary artificial heart.

1972
The first electric power generated in the US fueled by municipal solid waste is produced at the Meramec Plant of the Union Electric Company, St. Louis, Missouri. The venture is a cooperative effort with the city of St. Louis, with financial support from the Environmental Protection Agency. The power plant’s coal-fired boiler is supplemented with a small percentage of shredded refuse. In the following month, the plant will generate 200,000 kiloWatt hours of electricity, with wastes consumed at the rate of 12.5 tons an hour or about 300 tons a day. The plant disposes of solid waste, reduces fossil fuel consumption, and cuts costs to both the utility and the city.

1973
The World Trade Center in New York is officially dedicated at a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Tenants had begun moving into the first tower in January 1972, but this day marks the completion of the second tower. The towers was built by the New York Port Authority at a cost of US$900 million.

1975
Microsoft is founded as a partnership between Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

1979
The International Computer Programs awards Microsoft the Million Dollar Award for its 8080 BASIC. This is Microsoft’s first corporate recognition from the industry, and the first microprocessor product to win this award.

1982
Friday, April 2 through Sunday, April 4, radio station WDVE in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania hosts the first WDVE Video Olympics tournament featuring Atari coin-operated video games including Asteroids. The event is held at the Village Square Mall and is co-sponsored by Computer Tech, a Pittsburgh area computer school.

Walt Stewart scores 52,454,815 points on Atari’s Missile Command after playing the game for forty hours and twenty minutes at the Odyssey Fun Center in Sacramento, California.

1983
Commodore slashes the price of the VIC-20 home computer to just US$99, which actually less than it costs Texas Instruments (TI) to produce the competing 99/4A. Since TI cannot follow suit, they begin losing sales to Commodore because consumers, not knowing any better, and not being told any differently by TI, opt for the less expensive, less powerful VIC-20.

Space Shuttle Challenger, named after the British Naval research vessel HMS Challenger that sailed the Atlantic and Pacific oceans during the 1870’s, makes its maiden voyage into space. Challenger joined the NASA fleet of reusable winged spaceships and will fly nine successful Space Shuttle missions before its crew of seven were lost 73 seconds after launch on January 28, 1986.

1989
IBM announces a new version of the PS/2 Model 30 computer.

1993
Sunday, April 4, through Tuesday, April 6 the Spring European Computer Trade Show (ECTS) is held at the Business Design Centre in London, England. 4,969 people attend the event.

1994
Marc Andreessen and James “Jim” Clark incorporate Mosaic Communications Corp, which will later be renamed Netscape Communications Corp. Their original choice for the company’s name was Electric Media. Andreessen developed the software used for browsing the World Wide Web while working at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois.

1996
Christopher Schanot, age 19, of St. Louis, Missouri, is conditionally released to his parents, under round-the-clock house arrest. The conditions of his release are that he may not discuss computers with anyone, he may not be given access to computers or parts, and that he must wear an electronic surveillance device at all times. Schanot allegedly hacked into national computer networks and military computers, along with the Sprint and TRW credit reporting services.

1996
Comet Hyakutake is imaged by the US Asteroid Orbiter, Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR).

1997
Apple Computer introduces new Power Macintosh 6500 systems, featuring PowerPC 603e processors ranging from 225 to 300 MHz. Price: US$1800 to US$2999

1998
Trigun The anime series Trigun first airs. In the Brazil and the United States, the series airs on Cartoon Network, in Canada on G4 TechTV, in Hungary on the A+ network, in Italy on MTV Italia, in Japan on TV Tokyo, in the Philippines on GMA 7, and in Portugal on SIC Radical. The twenty-six episode series, which runs through September 30, follows the story of Vash the Stampede, The Humanoid Typhoon, and the two Bernardelli Insurance Society employees, Meryl Stryfe and Milly Thompson, who are ordered to follow him in order to minimize the damage that seems to follow Vash everywhere he goes. The series is based of the manga series of the same title written by Yasuhiro Nightow, which was first published in February 1995.

1999
A group of Canadian hackers calling themselves the Yorkshire Posse attack thirteen major corporate sites, including technology publisher O’Reilly & Associates Inc., Playboy.com, Sonymusic.com, and a Sun Microsystems Inc. customer support site in Canada. The group claims that the thirteen companies were targeted to protest the last April’s arrest of suspected Canadian hacker Jason Mewhiney who allegedly broke into a NASA website, causing tens of thousands of dollars in damage. The hacked sites were replaced with pages that proclaimed a “declaration of war against all who would challenge the freedom of Canadians with such ludicrous actions!”

2000
As investors attempt to make sense of the recent decision against Microsoft Corporation, technology stocks suffered a panic selling day as Nasdaq experiences its worst level ever, dropping 574 points. This brings the tech-centric index down twenty percent from its high in March.

Microsoft announces that it will give away six months of MSN Internet access service to qualified consumers as part of a forty million dollar marketing campaign.

Red Storm Entertainment releases Rogue Spear: Urban Operations, the first expansion for Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear. The expansion adds eight new maps and five classic Rainbow Six maps from the original Rainbow Six game.

2001
The Learning Channel (TLC) begins to air the Robotica series, season one.

2002
After a year of development and extensive testing, phpBB 2.0.0, dubbed the “Super Furry” version, is released three days later than intended.

2005
Activision releases Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil expansion pack for Doom 3 for Windows PC’s.

2006
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is released to DVD in the US. It is available in separate fullscreen and widescreen editions, along with a deluxe widescreen two-disc boxed set with additional artwork and other materials from Disney and Walden Media. The DVD sells four million copies on its first day of release, and overtaking Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as the top selling DVD in North America for 2006. IMDB credits.