The Great Geek Manual

1774
The element Oxygen is independently discovered for the third time by Joseph Priestley, a British Presbyterian minister and amateur chemist. Priestley discovered that mercury heated in air becomes coated with a red rust, which, heated separately, would convert back to mercury and give off “air.” Studying this “air,” Priestley observes that candles burn very brightly in it. Upon further experimentation, he also discovers that a mouse in a sealed vessel could breathe much longer with the gas present than a mouse sealed in a vessel without it. Joseph Priestley will publishes his conclusions in 1775, giving the element a name and, historically, receiving most of the credit for its discovery.

1790
The first United States census, which is mandated by the country’s constitution, is conducted under the direction of Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. The enormous undertaking of conducting the national census will be one of the driving forces behind the development of the earliest computers. A century later, the tabulating machines for which Herman Hollerith received the first three computer patents in history will be used to compile the results of the nation’s eleventh census. The introduction of the computers will reduce the time taken to tabulate the results from the seven years it took for the 1880 results to just two and a half years.

1936
At the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, the Deutsche Reichspost sets up twenty-eight viewing rooms around the city equipped with Fernseh projectors to screen daily transmissions. The projector receives and displays images in a 375-line interlaced format, producing a picture approximately 48 in x 42 in in size.

1946
United States President Harry S. Truman signs the Atomic Energy Act into law, creating the US Atomic Energy Commission about one year after World War II. Congress establishes the Commission to foster and control the peace time development of atomic technology.

1949
A secretary of the Federal Communications Commission, sends a letter to L.E. Parsons, a cable television pioneer in Astoria, Oregon, requesting that he “furnish the Commission full information with respect to the nature of the system you may have developed and may be operating.” This is the FCC’s first known involvement in cable. The FCC will determine that the Commission can exercise common carrier jurisdiction over the medium.

1967
The United States Navy recalls Captain Grace Murray Hopper, who had helped build both the Harvard Mark I and Mark II, to active duty. Along with a team drawn from major US computer manufacturers and Pentagon personnel, Hopper will develop the COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language) programming language with businesses in mind. The language is designed to be easily read by human and almost completely machine independent, unlike its predecessors, which were largely low-level and system-specific.

1980
United Artists releases the science fiction film The Final Countdown, directed by Don Taylor and starring Kirk Douglas, Martin Sheen, Katharine Ross, James Farentino, Ron O’Neal, and Charles Durning, to US theaters. In the film, the USS Nimitz puts to sea off of Pearl Harbor for routine exercises. After encountering a strange storm and losing all contact with the US Pacific Fleet, the crew fears nuclear war with the Soviet Union may have begun and the Nimitz arms herself for battle. However, after encountering Japanese Zero scout planes and finding Pearl Harbor filled with pre-World War II battleships, they realized that the storm the Nimitz passed through has sent the ship back in time to December 6th, 1941. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG) Running Time: 1 hr 42 mins

1981
At 12:01am, the MTV (Music Television) cable channel premieres on US cable networks in the United States. MTV is a twenty-four hour a day, seven day a week pop music channel. The first music video to be played on the station plays is Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles. Six years to the day later, MTV Europe will be launched in the UK.

1982
According to Twin Galaxies, Eric Smith, age 14, scores a record 1,379,450 points playing Dig Dug by Atari Inc. at Spectrum Entertainment in Mammoth Lakes, California. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

According to Twin Galaxies, Ned Troide scores a record 210,000 points playing Space Invaders by Taito at Barrel of Fun in Clearwater, Florida. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

1983
The International Business Machines (IBM) creates the Entry Systems Division in Boca Raton, Florida. A division team code-named “chess” will go later design and build the popular IBM PC, the forerunner of the company’s PC-compatible hardware platform.

1986
Apple Computer discontinues production of the Macintosh XL. The XL featured a 5MHz Motorola 68000 processor, a 400K 3.5″ floppy drive, 512KB DRAM expandable to 2MiB, and an optional external 10MB hard drive.

1987
The one thousandth Request for Comments reference guide (RFC) is published. Read RFC 1000.

1989
Microsoft releases Office, the first general business software for Macintosh computers.

1990
Tim Berners-Lee of CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, first suggests developing a networked system of hyperlinks. By October, he will have developed a prototype and, within three years of its completion, fifty active web servers will be online in what will become known as the world wide web.

1991
Version 0.01 of the Linux operating system is released.

1994
A New York Federal District jury awards US$208 million in damages to Alpex Computer, finding Nintendo guilty of infringement of an early video game patent held by Alpex.

1995
Broderbund Software, Inc. and The Learning Company announce an agreement to merge by the end of October in a deal worth US$440 million.

General Electric’s GEnie online service cancels a nine year contract with Atari which names their service as the “official” site for the online support of Atari products.

Version 1.1 of the Red Hat Linux distribution is released. Visit the system’s official website. Code-name: Mother’s Day+0.1 Price: US$39.95

1997
New Line Cinema releases the film Spawn, directed by Mark A.Z. Dippé and starring John Leguizamo, Michael Jai White, and Martin Sheen, to 2,536 US theaters. The film is an adaptation of Todd McFarlane’s creator-owned Image comic of the same name. Produced on a budget of US$40 million, it will gross US$19,738,749 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 1 hr 33 mins

1998
SuperMemo World, a software company founded on July 5, 1991 by Krzysztof Biedalak and Piotr Wozniak of Poland, becomes the first company in Eastern Europe to open an e-commerce store through Yahoo Stores.

1999
St. Martins Press releases the essay collection Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds! by Arthur C. Clarke as a hardcover. (ISBN-13: 978-0312198930) The book is a collection of Clarke’s most prophetic nonfiction essays in chronological order, essays in which he predicts everything from geosynchronous satellites to the internet. Length: 558 pages

2000
The Brazilian website of PBK Importacao e Exportacao is hacked by the hacking group “101″. View an archived version of the defaced website.

The Brazilian website of Renault do Brasil is hacked by the hacking group “101″. The website is hosted on a server running Windows NT. View an archived version of the defaced website.

The Brazilian website of Site Solucoes em Informatica, Telec, e Eng LTDA is hacked by “mofo”. The website is hosted on a server running Windows NT. View an archived version of the defaced website.

An Israelian man become the first recipient of the Jarvik 2000, the first totally artificial heart that can maintain blood flow and generate a pulse.

Microsoft announces a limited-time promotional price of US$59.95 for the forthcoming Windows Millennium Edition (ME) operating system (OS) for current users of Windows 98 and Windows 98 Second Edition. The system is scheduled to be released to retailers Thursday, September 14, and the introductory price is valid through Monday, January 15, 2001.

Palm in partnership with Claudia Schiffer launch the Palm Vx Claudia Schiffer Edition handheld computer. The device features a blue brushed-metal case, some custom software, and will be released exclusive through the model’s website.

2001
Fourty-two websites with Indonesian top-level domains are hacked by the hacking group “KaotiK Team”. The websites are hacked as part of the East Timor Campaign, a series of attacks against the IT infrastructure of Indonesia in protest of abuses of Indonesian military officers against East Timor’s people during the country’s occupation. The campaign, which began on October 2, 1997, is one of the first major hacktivism campaigns in history. All of the websites are defaced in an identical manner. View an archived version of the defaced website.

In the August issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, a study is released indicating that more than forty percent of video games do not properly warn of the violence they may depict when played. Statistics in the report indicate that fifty million households in the United States own at least one video game system. Seventy percent of children between the ages of two to eight have access to video games.

The website of the boy band Hanson is hacked by “freddie & chewie”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

2002
Sony releases its PlayStation 2 video game console with a new “Zen Black” translucent case in Japan. Price: US$250

2005
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) releases the eighth-generation AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 3800+ processor at 2000MHz with two 512KiB L2-Caches. Price: US$354 in quantities of 1000

The first version of the EyeOS open source (GPL) web operating system, 0.6.0, is first released. The idea behind eyeOS is to provide a full operating system, web based, which can be accessed from everywhere, with any Internet-capable device. Visit the system’s official website.

2006
Atari releases the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach for personal computers. The game is based on the manual game’s D&D 3.5 rules and set in the Eberron campaign. ESRB: T (Teen)

Blogger Josh Wolf is jailed by a Federal district court for refusing to turn over videotape footage of a July 2005 demonstration in San Francisco, California during which a police cruiser was set on fire. Wolf will serve 226 days in prison, despite protests that he is acting as a citizen journalist. The period is longer than other journalist in US history has ever served for protecting source material. The case raised serious issues throughout the country, including a debate over whether bloggers are journalists, whether journalist may refuse to comply with a subpoena, and whether it is legal or ethical to prosecute journalists under Federal laws in states with shield laws designed to protect journalists.

The first version of the free 64 Studio Linux distribution, 0.9.0, is released. The operating system is based on Debian designed specifically for creative users using x86-64 hardware architectures. Visit the system’s official website. Code-name: Toe Rag

Planamesa Software releases version 2.0 of the NeoOffice open source office suite for Mac OS X. Visit the system’s official website.

QiNet releases version 2.0 of the QiLinux Free Linux distribution. Code-name: Supernova Visit the system’s official website.

2008
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) orders Comcast to cease its torrent throttling, which it describes as “discriminatory network management practices,” and to disclose those practice by the end of August. Read the official order.