The Great Geek Manual

1885
Japan, which will one day become the world’s foremost leader in technological innovation, issues its first patent to the inventor of a rust-proof paint.

1888
Oliver B. Shallenberger, of Rochester, Pennsylvania, receives a patent for the electric meter. The meter is operated by rotating electrical fields, which Shallenberger was the first to observe. Before the invention, Edison had charged customers a fee for each of their lamps. Then, he attempted to employ a notoriously impractical chemical meter. Shallenberger’s meter, proved superior to both methods. Over one twenty thousand of the devices will be in use within a decade.

1894
The first wireless transmission of information using Morse code is demonstrated by Oliver Lodge during a meeting of the British Association at Oxford. A message is transmitted about 150 yards (50m) from the old Clarendon Laboratory to the University Museum. He will later write in Work of Hertz and Some of his Successors, the idea didn’t occur to Lodge at the time to develop the discovery into long-distance telegraphy. “Stupidly enough, no attempt was made to apply any but the feeblest power, so as to test how far the disturbance could really be detected.”

1901
The first purportedly powered flight, made by Gustave Whitehead in his Number 21 takes place. Though the flight is accomplished more than two years in advance of the Wright Brothers, it will go largely undocumented, unnoticed, unremarked until long after the Wrights’ globally renowned feat at Kitty Hawk.

1938
The Student of Prague is the first feature film to be shown in full on 405-line television by the BBC.

1940
John Atanasoff finishes a paper describing the Atanasoff Berry Computer (ABC), the world’s first electronic digital computing device. He designed the system with Clifford Berry for the purpose of solving simultaneous linear equations. Atanasoff will only be given credit for the paper and title of inventor of the electronic digital computer after a long court battle that won’t end until 1972. The case will involve lengthy testimony by Atanasoff and ENIAC inventors J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, who disputed the patent. A judge will rule that Atanasoff is the true inventor, invalidating the ENIAC patent. Read more about the ABC. Read more about the case of Honeywell vs Sperry Rand Records.

1960
The Japanese anime Alakazam the Great, based on the manga by Osamu Tezuka, is released to theaters in Japan. The film is of special note, as it will become one of the first anime films ever to be released in the United States on July 26, 1961. IMDB listing

1966
The NASA Lunar Orbiter 1, which was launched on August 10, enters orbit around the Moon. It will return two hundred photographs, which will be used by NASA to select landing sites for both the Surveyor and Apollo missions.

1967
The UK Marine Broadcasting Offences Act declares participation in offshore pirate radio illegal. The Radio London pirate station closes at 3:00pm and both the pirate stations Radio Scotland and Radio 270 close at midnight.

1984
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) announces the Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA), supporting up to 640×350 resolution in sixteen colors. With 64K, the card costs US$524. For 640×350x16 mode, a US$200 64KB RAM expander is required.

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) announces its PC Network local area network, the PC/IX for the PC/AT, based on UNIX System III from AT&T. Code-name: Ringmaster (at IBM) and Octopus (at Microsoft) Price: US$695

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) announces the IBM PC/AT computer, featuring a 6MHz Intel 80286 processor, the PC-DOS 3.0 operating system, a 5.25-inch 1.2MB floppy drive, 256 or 512KB RAM, an optional 20MB hard drive, and either a monochrome or color monitor. The system also features the MS-DOS 3.0 operating system. The XENIX operating system from Microsoft is also available. Code-name: Bigtop (at IBM) and Salmon (at Microsoft) Price: US$4,000 – US$6,700

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) announces the Professional Graphics Display Monitor. The fourteen inch monitor, priced at US$1300, features a total of 4,096 possible colors (256 at any one time) and a resolution of 640×480. The Professional Graphics Controller Card requires two adjacent expansion slots in a PC. The US$3,000 card features an 8MHZ 8088 chip and 384KB of RAM.

Microsoft releases version 3.0 of MS-DOS for IBM PCs. It adds support for 1.2MB floppy disks, and hard disks larger than 10MB.

1985
Rod Brock, of Seattle Computer Products (SCP), writes to Microsoft president Jon Shirley, notifying the intent to sell SCP’s royalty-free DOS license, and seeking a Microsoft buyout of SCP for US$20 million.

1986
The Silicon Mountain Conference of the International Fido Net (Later called Fidocon ‘86 or The First International Fidonet Conference) is held from August 14th to 17th, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Fidocons will be held into the nineties and into the 21st century in Europe. FidoNet is a computer network connecting bulletin board systems (BBS) around the globe, both socially and technologically.

1989
Daniel T. Depew and Dean Ashley Lambey of Richmond Virginia are arrested on charges of plotting to kidnap, molest and kill a boy to produce a snuff film. The pair initially contact undercover agents through a computer bulletin board system (BBS), bringing further attention to the case, which is considered to be one of the first nationwide computer bulletin board entrapment cases. Ultimately, Depew is sentenced to thirty-three years in prison and Lambey is sentenced to thirty. While the BBS angle is slight, it is played up significantly in the media. Some media outlets even go so far as to speculate that the pair were pre-selling the film on local computer bulletin boards.

Hewlett-Packard introduces the HP DeskWriter 300 dpi ink jet printer for Macintosh computers. Price: US$1,195 Weight: 15lb

1990
Swedish Code of Statutes SFS 1990:886 is published, establishing the rules for film and video censorship under the Examination and Control of Films and Videograms Act.

1992
Warner Bros. releases the fantasy comedy Stay Tuned, directed by Peter Hyams and starring John Ritter and Jeffrey Jones, to 1,605 US theaters. In the film, couch potato Roy Knable buys a new satellite television system from a mysterious salesman after his wife, Helen smashes their old TV in an argument. What Roy doesn’t realize is that the satellite is a route to Hell. Roy and Helen are sucked into a warped version of cable television with 666 channels of humorously murderous programming, in which each program is designed to collect souls for hell. Produced on a budget of US$25 million, the film will gross US$3,532,540 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG) Running Time: 1 hr 29 mins

1994
The Hubble Space Telescope photographs Uranus and its rings.

1995
Nintendo releases the Virtual Boy video game console in North America. The system comes bundled with Mario’s Dream Tennis. Other games available for the system are Galactic Pinball, Panic Bomber (only in Japan), Red Alarm, and Teleroboxer. Due to poor sales, the Virtual Boy will be discontinued in 1996, with 3D Tetris being the last game to be released on March 22, 1996. In total, only twenty-two games will be released, and only fourteen of those will be released in North America. Price: US$179.95

1999
The Classic Computer and Video Game Expo is held August 14 – 15 in the Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

2000
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) states that they have begun shipping its 1.1GHz processors to their major customers. AMD predicts that it will ship nearly seven million processors of all types in its present business quarter.

2001
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Scotland Yard announce the arrest of a man, age 24, who is allegedly responsible for a computer virus known as the “Leaves worm,” which was discovered on July 9 to plague Windows-based computer systems. The arrest, which was made in the UK, was made on July 23 but kept secret to avoid compromising the international investigation. The suspect has since been charged with “designing and propagating malicious code, known as the W32-Leave.worm into Windows-based computer systems.”

Windows XP Build 2542 is released. It is the first build to require testers to use product keys. It features no visible changes from the previous release but does address several bugs.

2003
3DO sells off its video game assets. UbiSoft pays US$1.3 million for rights and properties of the Might and Magic and Heroes of Might and Magic franchise. Namco Hometek pays US$1.5 million for Street Racing Syndicate. Microsoft pays US$450,000 for High Heat Baseball. JoWooD pays US$90,000 for Jacked. Crave Entertainment pays US$750,000 for Army Men. Former CEO Trip Hawkins pays US$405,000 for Johnny Moseley Mad Trix, various Internet patents, and various pre-2001 game titles.

Graphics chip maker ATI Technologies announces that it will develop graphics components for Microsoft’s next Xbox video game system.

The households of approximately forty-five million people in the eastern United States and ten million in Ontario, Canada lose power in the most widespread blackout in history. The final conclusion of the investigation into the incident will reveal that the blackout began when a generating plant in Eastlake, Ohio went offline amid high electrical demand. The shut down lead to a cascading failure when a race condition bug in General Electric Energy’s Unix-based XA/21 energy management system caused alarms to fail. After the alarm system failed, unprocessed events queue up and the system’s primary server failed within thirty minutes. The system’s backup server failed due to the same software bug, and the system crashed, ultimately forcing the shutdown of more than 256 power plants.

2006
In a discussion at Microsoft Gamefest, security development engineer David Weinstein warns of active organized crime on MMORPG servers. Hackers steal account information and sell them off in “black markets” both within the game atmosphere and outside of it, such as on eBay. Read more at GameSpot.

MP3 Rocket, a Gnutella client based on the popular LimeWire P2P program, is released. Visit the application’s official website.

Sony and Dell admit to major flaws in several Sony batteries that could result in the battery overheating and catching fire or even exploding. As a result they recall over 4.1 million laptop batteries in the largest computer-related recall in history. The cost of this recall is being shared between Dell and Sony. Dell also confirms that one of its laptops caught fire in Illinois. This recall will prompt Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to order the companies to investigate the troubles with the batteries. The ministry orders the companies to report on their findings and draw up a plan to prevent future problems by the end of August or face fines under Japan’s consumer safety laws.

2008
Wirtland is founded as the world’s first internet-based sovereign micronation. It claims, through its website, to be an experiment into legitimacy and self-sustainability of a country without its own soil, which transcends national borders without breaching or lessening the sovereignty of any involved. Visit the official Wirtland website.