The Great Geek Manual

1858
Charles Darwin first publishes his theory of evolution in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, along with the theory of Alfred Russel Wallace.

1890
The father of the Cthulhu Mythos, H.P. Lovecraft, is born at 9:00am in his family home at 194 Angell Street in Providence, Rhode Island. Insanity ensued.

1911
A message originating from the offices of The New York Times in New York City becomes the first cable message to complete a circuit of the globe, being passed through sixteen separate relays in the Azores, Gibraltar, India, Phillipines, Midway, Guam, Hawaii, and, finally, San Francisco. Transmitted as seven o’clock in the evening local time, the message, which reads simply, “This message sent around the world,” is returned to its original transmission point just sixteen minutes later, having traveled nearly twenty-nine thousand miles.

1912
Thomas Edison receives a patent for a “Phonographic Apparatus” and another for a “Storage Battery.” (US No. 1,036,470 and 1,036,471)

1920
The first commercial radio station, 8MK (WWJ) in Detroit, Michigan, goes into operation.

1926
Japan’s public broadcasting company, Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK) is established.

1930
Allan DuMont makes his first experimental television transmissions. The first demonstration telecast of home television in the US is received in New York City. A half-hour program is hosted by the cartoonist Harry Hirschfeld, and demonstrated on screens placed in a store in the Hotel Ansonia, the Hearst building, and a home at 98 Riverside Drive. The signal traveled about six miles, the greatest distance for a television transmission to date. The performers were in the studios Jenkins W2XCR (Jersey City, NJ) and deForest W2XCD (Passaic, NJ).

Philo Farnsworth patents a television system. (US No. 1,773,980) This is his first patent, with a description of his image dissector tube, which will be his most important contribution to the development of television. He had begun working on this concept at an early age, gained some financial support for his research, and worked in a small laboratory with limited assistance.

1953
The Soviet UnionSoviet Union publicly acknowledges that it has tested a hydrogen bomb, ushering in a era of global fear of nuclear anhilation.

1959
Bell Laboratories announces the development of a self-contained electronic artificial larynx for people who have lost their voices through surgical intervention or paralysis of the vocal cords.

1960
The Soviet Union recovers a number of animals, including two dogs, Belka (”Squirrel”) and Strelka (”Little Arrow”), the first living organisms to return from space. After a day in orbit, Sputnik 5, launched on August 19, 1960, fires its retrorockets and the landing capsule returns to Earth.

Television service begins in Norway for the first time.

1962
The US Department of Defense announced plans to develop a Titan III launch vehicle powered by both solid and liquid fuel rocket motors with a total thrust of over eleven million newtons. Scheduled to become operational in 1965, the Titan III will be used to launch the Air Force’s X-20 Dyna Soar manned spacecraft, as well as heavy unmanned military satellites. The Martin Marietta Corporation has been selected as prime contractor for the project, at an estimated cost of between US$500 million and US$1 billion. At a news conference the following day, Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara will cite the Titan III as a major step toward overtaking the Soviet Union in military space development.

1975
NASA launches the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars.

1976
Gen Con IX is held from August 20 – 22 at the Horticultural Hall, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Three hundred people attend the event. Visit the event’s official website.

1977
NASA launches the Voyager 2 space probe, on a Titan III-E Centaur rocket. Its mission is to explore the outer planets, including Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, where it will also discover and photograph many previously unknown moons, rings, and other planetary features. A twelve inch copper phonograph record carried on board contains greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music, and sounds of nature.

1985
The original Xerox 914 copier, which was originally introduced in March 1960 by patent lawyer Chester Carlson, is inducted into the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.

1991
Apple Computer and Adobe Systems sign a letter of intent for Apple to include Adobe’s font technology in the future Apple System 7 operating system.

1993
The Federal Trade Commission decides by in a four-to-one vote to cease investigating Microsoft for unfair trade practices. The US Department of Justice notifies Microsoft it is proceeding with its own antitrust investigation, focusing on DOS marketing practices. The European Commission also begins its own independent investigation.

1995
Journalist George Johnson publishes an article mourning the loss of obsolete computer hardware and software in a column in the New York Times entitled, “Let’s Boot Up the Trash-80 and Play Some Oldies.” Published just before the release Microsoft’s Windows 95, the predicts the disappearance of Windows 3.1 in “digital bonfires” across the country, in which millions of copies of the old software will be wiped from hard disks to make way for the new Windows. While the piece is a poetic salute to the passage of time, it will prove to be a bit premature. For years following the release of Windows 95, offices will continue using 3.1, citing stability issues in Microsoft’s newest system.

1998
Yahoo! launches Yahoo! Small Business.

1999
The San Jose Mercury News reports that the Quantum Corporation plans to lay off 615 employees, or more than one quarter of its entire workforce. The twelve month restructuring plan is projected to save the company more than US$100 million per year beginning in 2001.

Version 3.6 of the Spitfire BBS software is released.

2001
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announces the 1.1GHz Athlon 4 processor for portable computers, featuring a 200MHz system bus, PowerNow technology, and Streaming SIMD Extensions. Price: US$425

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announces the 900, 950, and 1000 MHz Duron processors for portable computers, featuring 200MHz system buses, 64KB Level-2 Caches, PowerNow technology, and Streaming SIMD Extensions. Price: US$130

Apple Computer begins shipping a Power Mac G4 computer with dual 800MHz processors, a CD-RW/DVD-R SuperDrive, 256MB RAM, and a 80GB hard drive. Price: US$3,499

Hewlett-Packard announces the DVD100i DVD writer, which is to be released in September. It is the first consumer grade DVD+RW drive available for personal computers. Price: US$599

The Wireless Developer 2001 conference is held from August 20 – August 24 at the Santa Clara Westin hotel in Santa Clara, California.

2002
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) releases the 2 GHz Athlon XP 2400+ processor. Price: US$193 each in quantities of 1000

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) releases the 2.133 GHz Athlon XP 2600+ processor. Price: US$297 each in quantities of 1000

Comedy Central begins to air it’s new season of BattleBots Phase 5.0 in half hour episodes. “Phase 5.0″ or season five will be the last for BattleBots series.

Sony announces that production of Betamax videocassette recorders will cease after just two thousand more unites are produced for the Japanese market. The number of units for the fiscal year has reportedly reached 2,700. Sony blames the final demise of the format on difficulties sourcing components and the advent of digital recorders.

Version 3.06 of the O’Caml programming language is released. Visit the language’s official website.

2004
Version 1.20 of IM2, a multiprotocol instant messaging application for Microsoft Windows, is released. Visit the application’s official website.

2006
The website of notorious hacker Kevin Mitnick is defaced by Pakistani hackers with offensive messages. The domain names defensivethinking.com, kevinmitnick.com, mitnicksecurity.com, and mitsec.com remain defaced for several hours before the affected files are replaced. Mitnick comments that, “The Web hosting provider that hosts my sites was hacked, fortunately, I don’t keep any confidential data on my web site, so it wasn’t that serious. Of course it is embarrassing to be defaced—nobody likes it.”

2007
Yahoo! begins the process of shutting down its popular Yahoo! Photos service following the acquisition of Flickr. The shutdown was completed on September 20, 2007.

2008
At the Intel Developer Forum, Intel showcases its next-generation core microarchitecture, codenamed Nehalem. The new platform will match the performance of its predecessors but operate on considerably less power. It will also feature an improved memory management system called “QuickPath,” as well as a new circuit/process technology called “Power Gate” that is capable of switching off power when idle.