The Great Geek Manual

1795
The Academy of Sciences in France adopts the metre as the unit of length and the base of the metric system. There had been no uniformity of French measurements prior to the Revolution. Delambre and Méchain measured an arc of the meridian from Dunkirk to Barcelona, in order to define the metre as one ten-millionth the distance between the poles and the equator.

1827
English pharmacist John Walker sell the first friction matches, which he had invented the previous year. He invented matches while trying to produce a readily combustible material for fowling-pieces. The first match he created was the wooden stirring stick used in a mixture of potash and antimony. In an attempt to remove a dollop of the mixture on the end of the stick, he scraped it on the stone floor, and it ignited. However, he will never patent the invention, and he will never produce more than he could see in his pharmacy.

1869
Celluloid becomes the first plastic to be patented.

1917
The US government cancels all amateur wireless transmission licenses, the day after declaring war on Germany and enters the First World War.

1924
The first flight (with stops) to successfully fly completely around the world takes off.

1925
Imperial Airways becomes the first airline to play movies during a scheduled flight. The first film to be shown is First National’s The Lost World.

1927
The first public transmission of television pictures over telephone lines using a prototype two-way television system dubbed “The Picture Telephone” is demonstrated by the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) for a group of newspaper reporters and dignitaries. The transmission is sent over 200 miles, from New Jersey to Washington DC. It’s the first public television demonstration outside UK. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover and AT&T president Walter Gifford use the connection to speak to each other. Today we have, in a sense, the transmission of sight for the first time in the world’s history,” Hoover said. “Human genius has now destroyed the impediment of distance in a new respect, and in a manner hitherto unknown.” As well as being displayed on a small screen, the images are shown on an array of lamps three feet high and two feet wide, seen to the right of Dr. Herbert Ives, head of television research at AT&T. While the quality of the small images in the scanning-disc viewer are described by the New York Times on April 8th as “excellent”, the large screen images were “not so good.” Newspapers trumpeted AT&T’s achievement. Herbert Ives was the AT&T researcher who led the television project.

1931
Experimental television station W2XCD in Passaic, NJ, which is the first television station to transmit to private homes, broadcasts the first full-length feature film to ever be shown on television, The Police Patrol (made in 1925) in six daily episodes.

1938
Du Pont researcher Roy J. Plunkett and technician Jack Rebok accidentally discovered the chemical compound polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), which will later be marketed under the Teflon brand name. Plunkett was researching chemical reactions of the gas perfluoroethylene in an attempt to synthesize a new refrigerant. Rebok found an apparently defective cylinder of this gas, in which no pressure was released when the valve was opened, even though the cyclinder weighed as much as a full cylinder. Rebok suggested sawing it open to investigate. Inside, they discovered a slippery white powder with unusual properties. It was a wonderful solid lubricant in its powdered form, it was chemically inert, and it had a very high melting point. The pair quickly realized that it was formed by an unexpected polymerization.

1954
The first TV Dinner is released by Swanson & Sons.

1955
The New York Times publishes a column reporting that it was discover that the planet Jupiter emitted radio waves. Discovered by Bernard F. Burke and Kenneth L. Franklin, astronomers at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, the waves resembled short bursts of static, similar to the interference on home radios caused by lightning. This was the first time radio waves were detected from any planet in our solar system. The astronomers announced their find at the semi-annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Princeton, N.J. Discovered at first by chance, it took several weeks to pinpoint Jupiter as the origin, rather than any local source on Earth.

1956
Capitol Tower, the headquarters of Capitol Records in Hollywood, California, is dedicated. The building, designed to resemble a stack of records, is the first circular office tower in the US. It’s thirteen stories tall and ninety-two feet in diameter. At night, a light at the tip of the tower blinks the letters “H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D” in Morse Code.

1959
The first atomic generated electricity is produced at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico. The experimental model uses a “plasma thermocouple” in the reactor rather than a full scale turbine. It only produces enough electrical power for a light bulb.

A radar signal is bounced off the Sun for the first time from Stanford, California.

1964
International Business Machines (IBM) launches the System 360 mainframe architecture in a line of six mutually compatible models, complete with 40 peripherals. The line, dubbed the “360″ because it addresses all types and sizes of customer, cost IBM over five billion dollars to develop, and it will come to be widely considered one of the riskiest business gambles of all time. However, the gamble will pay off. The 360 family will become the most successful IBM system of all time, generating in over US$100 billion in revenue through the mid-eighties. In just the first three months of its release, IBM will receive US$1.2 billion in orders. Within five years, over thirty-three thousand units will be sold, popularizing the concept of a computer “upgrade” around the world. The 360 architecture introduces a number of industry standards to the marketplace, including the worldwide standard of the 8-bit byte, and it will become the basis for all sequent IBM mainframe architectures, which will hold a 65% marketshare in the nineties. The family’s popularity largely stemmed from its components’ unprecedented interoperability. Over five models and 150 peripherals will be developed, allowing customers to add or remove computing capacity without losing their initial software investment. Such incompatibilities had previously been a serious impediment to commercial computing.

Panama withdraws the registration of the infamous pirate radio station, the Radio Caroline ship, in accordance with international radio regulations. The closing of Radio Caroline marks the end of an era.

1965
The United States launches Intelsat I (”Early Bird”), the first commercial geosynchronous communications satellite. It follows Russia’s earlier launch of the “WORM” test satellite.

1969
Steve Crocker, a graduate student at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) publishes the first Request for Comments (RFC 0001) document, entitled “Host Software.” Crocker coined the term RFC to avoid sounding too self-righteous. He hoped to create an environment in which everyone felt comfortable participating. The first post outlines the interface between hosts and BNN’s Interface Message Processor, proposing that each site should be responsible for host software to connect their computers to the ARPANET’s IMPs. The post will become the first in a long series of technical postings which will be used to develop and define protocols for networking that the ARPANET will be built upon. Before long, thousands of RFC’s will be in circulation. This first RFC arguably marks the symbolic birth of the Internet.

1973
NASA launches Pioneer 11 is launched on a mission to Jupiter and then to Saturn, where it will make the first close-up observations of the planet and its rings.

1975
The first edition of Computer Notes, the Altair newsletter, premieres as a newsletter with the banner headline, “Altair BASIC – Up and Running” for Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) Altair 8800 users. Read the issue in the Computer Notes archive at the Startup Gallery.

1978
U.S. President Jimmy Carter cancels the development of the neutron bomb, an enhanced radiation weapon.

1980
3M first introduces Post-it Notes in the US.

1982
According to Twin Galaxies, Rijanto Joesoeff, age 22, scores a record-setting 4,421,232 points playing the Atari arcade game Centipede after playing the game for eight hours at the Captain Video arcade in Los Angeles, California. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

1983
According to Twin Galaxies, Robbie Saunders scores a record-setting 35,057,100 points playing the Williams Electronics arcade game Joust at the Outer Limits arcade in Durham, North Carolina. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

Space Shuttle Challenger astronauts Story Musgrave and Don Peterson perform the first space shuttle spacewalk with a duration of four hours, ten minutes. (STS-6)

The first Internet/UUCP e-mail is sent to Sweden from Jim McKie in Amsterdam to Björn Eriksen in Stockholm. Björn’s employer, the UNIX consulting company Enea becomes the Swedish landing point for the European Unix network (Eunet).

1984
NASA launches the Space Shuttle Challenger on its eleventh mission. (STS-41-C) The mission marks the first time history eleven have been in space at the same time.

Seventy-four days after the introduction of the Macintosh, fifty-thousand units have been sold.

1993
In Russia, a huge radioactive cloud was released from an explosion of a tank of radioactive waste at the secret military facility at Tomsk 7. Located in the Russian wilderness, 1700 miles east of Moscow, it was the worse nuclear accident, thought not the only one, since the incident at Chernobyl in Apr 1986. A week later, delegates at a meeting in Tokyo from the world’s richest nations, agreed to give urgent help to Russia for problems with nuclear waste, obsolete nuclear missile warheads, and aging nuclear reactors.

1994
In a Massachusetts US District Court, a federal grand jury returns a one count indictment charging David LaMacchia, a student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with conspiring with “persons unknown” to violate 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1343, the wire fraud statute. LaMacchia, also known by the handles “John Gaunt” and “Grimjack”, allegedly committed software piracy using MIT servers. This marks the first use of Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud statues in a case involving a bulletin board system (BBS). The indictment is for only a single count, which is virtually unheard of in federal cases. According to the indictment, LaMacchia devised a scheme to defraud software manufacturers and vendors “on an international scale” by the “illegal copying and distribution of copyrighted software” without payment of licensing fees and royalties. This was accomplished through the use of two bulletin boards, one for uploading software and another (password protected) for the free downloading of the selected software. The indictment alleges that LaMacchia’s scheme caused losses of more than one million dollars to software copyright holders. The indictment does not allege that LaMacchia sought or derived any personal benefit from the scheme to defraud. The case will be dismissed on December 29, 1994, and on January 27, 1995 the US Government will decide not to appeal the dismissal. The dismissal will lead to the concept of the “LaMacchia Exemption” wherein it is implied that non-profit copyright infringing is not a crime. It is, however, a civil offense.

1997
Apple Computer begins shipping Mac OS 7.6.1.

Microsoft announces plans to acquire WebTV Networks for US$425 million. The United States Justice Department launches a review of the merger.

NEC Electronics unveils the 66 MHz 64-bit VR4102 processor for Windows CE devices. It features 4KB instruction cache, 1KB data cache, modem emulation, advanced power management, support for many peripherals. Shipments begin in July. Price: US$25 in 10,000-unit quantities

1999
A forged webpage made to look like a Bloomberg financial news story raises shares of a small technology company by thirty-one percent in a fraud scheme that makes national headlines.

Hayes Microcomputer sells its assets to Zoom Telephonics. Founded in 1978, Hayes was the first company to manufacture personal computer modems.

Robert St. Germain, 55, of Verbank, New York is indicted in a White Plains, New York federal court on charges of taking bribes related to the sale of US$20 million worth of International Business Machines (IBM) products. Also named in the indictment is Lawrence Laspina of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida who purchased the parts and computers.

The Robot Wars website comes back online after many months of inactivity, featuring some streaming video from previous events, and it’s own forum section. An announcements is made that registration for a ‘99 Robot Wars event is open.

Voodoo3 2000 and 3000 graphics boards for personal computers become available at retail. The boards are the first to carry the 3dfx brand name. Price: US$129.99 and US$179.99

2001
Lindsey Gall, a freshman at the University of Illinois and a resident of a suburb of Chicago, wins the grand prize at Sega’s Dreamcast Championships held in San Francisco, California. Her prize is a trip to Jamaica and fifteen thousand dollars. Gall’s performance concluded an eight-month long nationwide Mobile Assault Tour.

The Mars Odyssey is launched on a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Odyssey will travel 286 million miles before entering orbit around the planet Mars on October 24, 2001. Its primary mission is to search for traces of hydrogen in the form of ice under the Martian surface and to thermally map the planet, from an altitude of 250 miles. Visit the official Mars Odyssey website.

2003
Yahoo! introduces the new Yahoo! Search, an overhaul of its search interface that more closely resembles Google’s design, with a minimal interface and cached results. Read the official press release.

2005
A report released The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) announced that one in four-of the 625 primate species and subspecies are at risk of extinction. Visit the official IUCN website.

2006
Eidos Interactive releases the third-person shooter Tomb Raider: Legend for Windows, the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Xbox 360 in Europe. It is the the seventh game in the Tomb Raider series, and it is also the first game in series not to be developed by Core Design. The game was developed by Crystal Dynamics. Visit the official Tomb Raider website.

Lara Croft is entered into the Guinness Book of World Records as the “Most Successful Human Video Game Heroine.” Visit the official Guinness World Records website.

The NASA space probe New Horizons crosses into the orbit of Mars at the end of its seventy-eight day journey, setting a new Earth-to-Mars distance flight record.

The new country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .eu is open for general registration.