The Great Geek Manual

1927
The first Ford Model A automobiles are unveiled and sold at New York City’s Waldorf Hotel and in thirty-five other cities around the US, Canada, and Europe. The Phaeton sells for US$395 and the Tudor Sedan sells for US$495.00.

1942
A team led by physicist Enrico Fermi initiates the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois as part of the Manhattan Project.

1953
BBC Television introduces a new on-screen logo, which is the world’s first moving logo for a television service.

1954
The Naval Ordnance Research Calculator (NORC) is presented to the United States Navy at the Naval Surface Weapons Center in Dahlgren, Virginia by International Business Machines (IBM). The machine was built at the Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory under the direction of Wallace Eckert. At the machine’s inauguration, John von Neumann gives the keynote speech and the machine calculates pi to 3,089 digit as a demonstration of its capabilities.

1957
The first full-scale atomic electric generating station in the US goes into operation in Shippingport, Pennsylvania. The plant will reach full power in twenty-one days, generating sixty megawatts of power for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

1971
Soviet Mars 3 becomes the first spacecraft to achieve a soft landing on Mars.

1979
A daily comic strip based on the Star Trek television series is first published in the Los Angeles Time. It will run until December 3, 1983.

1982
Atari signs a long-term agreement with Destron, to market home video game versions of Destron’s arcade games.

1991
Apple Computer releases its first version of QuickTime as a multimedia add-on for System Software. Visit the software’s official website.

1992
A US federal court rules that Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) does not have the right to use Intel’s 486 microcode in its microprocessors.

The US Federal Trade Commission announces it is closing the case of its two-year investigation of Nintendo based on charges that the company has been conspiring to eliminate retail discounting of its popular home video games, with no further action being warranted.

1993
NASA launches the Space Shuttle Endeavour on a mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. During the course of the mission, the crew uses a notebook computer in space for the first time. The notebook, an IBM ThinkPad 750, is used to observe color schematics and sketches of the telescope.

1994
Imagineer Co., Ltd. releases Seifuku Denseteu Pretty Fighter for the Super Famicom in Japan.

New York Federal District Court Judge Kimba Wood upholds the US$208 million patent infringement award against Nintendo, refusing the company’s request for a new trial in the matter of patent infringement against Alpex Computer.

Robert and Carleen Thomas, the sysops of the Amateur Action Bulletin Board System of Milpitas, California, are sentenced to 37 and 30 months, respectively, in Memphis, Tennessee, where their California-based BBS was found to be in violation of Tennessee obscenity standards. The sysops have been scanning photos from sexually-explicit magazines and posting them for their members, who were charged a US$55 membership fee. Under federal sentencing rules, both are required to serve their full term. This is the first case of a BBS owner being prosecuted for the content of their BBS based on the standards of a community in a different state.

1996
Delbert Yocam joins Borland International, Inc. as chairman. Visit the game’s official website.

Net Address launches as a new free e-mail address service for Internet users. The service provides new users an extension of “@usa.net”.

1997
The California Department of Fish and Game is anonymously hacked.

1998
+At Home Network, a prominent high-speed cable Internet service provider, announces that they have acquired Full Force Systems, Inc., an interactive television set-top box software developer.

At the College of William and Mary in Willamsburg, Virginia, a thirty-six member Commission on Information Technology publicly endorses the Virginia Internet Policy Act, a piece of proposed legislation drafted by Virginia Governor James Gilmore that would make Internet “spam” illegal. The commission includes members such as Robert McDowell, a vice president at Microsoft“>Microsoft, Frank Bowers, vice president of Cox Communications, John Sidgmore, vice chairman of MCI-Worldcom, and Michael Daniels, chairman of Network Solutions. If passed, the seven part Act will address such issues as child pornography, consumer privacy, fraud, and spam. and it will be the first such legislation of its kind in the United States.

Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. files a countersuit against the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which had filed an application for a Temporary Restraining Order to prevent the sale of the Diamond’s Rio PMP300 with the Central District Court of California on October 8, 1998. According to the RIAA, the player, which stores and plays music obtained from the Internet, violates the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act because it circumvents the need to pay royalties to play the files. On October 26, the judge denied the RIAA’s application, but the case is ongoing.

Midway releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero for the PlayStation in Europe. ESRB: M (Mature)

1999
Apple announces that it has enhanced its entire Power Mac G4 line of computers to include the new ATI Rage 128 Pro graphics card to improve the system’s 3D graphics performance. In addition, the 350MHz configuration has been upgraded to the same architecture used in the 400MHz and 450MHz configurations, and it now includes a DVD-ROM drive, AGP graphics, and support for AirPort wireless networking with an optional US$99 card required.

id Software releases the first-person shooter (FPS) Quake III Arena for Windows in North America. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: M (Mature)

2002
Nintendo releases The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for the Game Boy Advance and for the Wii Virtual Console in Japan in the US. It is the third installment in The Legend of Zelda series. Visit the game’s official website.

2003
Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) confirms that 2^20996011-1 is prime number. With 6,320,430 digits, it is the largest known prime number and the fortieth known Mersenne prime, six of which have been discovered by GIMPS. Visit the official GIMPS website.

Pirate copies of a pre-alpha version of Microsoft’s Windows “Longhorn” operating system go on sale in Malaysia for less than US$2 a copy more than a year ahead of its expected release date.

2004
The Gen Con SoCal 2004 gaming convention is held December 2 – 5 at the Anaheim Convention Center, in Anaheim, California. The event will be attended by 5,559 people. Visit the event’s official website.

Nintendo releases the Nintendo DS (Dual Screen) in Japan. The system features two ARM processors, a 67MHz ARM946E-S main CPU and a 33MHz ARM7TDMI co-processor, 4MB Mobile RAM, two 3-inch diagonal TFT LCD screens, stereo speakers, a microphone, and IEEE 802.11 wireless communications with range about thirty feet. It also includes PictoChat and a demo of Metroid Prime: Hunters built-in. It is the first Nintendo system to be first released outside Japan, where it will be released on December 2. Visit the game’s official website.

Tim Berners-Lee accepts a chair in computer science at the University of Southampton.

Ubisoft releases Prince of Persia: Warrior Within for personal computers the Gamecube, Playstation 2, and Xbox in North America. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: M (Mature)

2005
Microsoft launches the Xbox 360 video game system in Europe. The system features an IBM PowerPC processor with three 3.2GHz symmetrical cores, a 500MHz Custom ATI Graphics Processor, a 20GB hard drive, and four controller ports.

Paramount Pictures releases the science fiction film Æon Flux, directed by Karyn Kusama and starring Charlize Theron, Sophie Okonedo, Marton Csokas, and Jonny Lee Miller, to 2,608 theaters. In it, a mysterious assassin working for the Monicans, a group of rebels trying to overthrow the government, is sent on a mission to kill the Chairman, the dictator of the city that contains all the survivors of a virus that has destroyed most of the Earth’s population. It is based the animated science fiction television series Æon Flux. Produced on a budget of USUS$62 million, it will gross US$12,661,112 domestically in its opening weekend. Visit the game’s official website. IMDB listing MPAA Rating: PG-13 Running Time: 1 hr 35 mins

The Rybka chess engine, created by International Master Vasik Rajlich, is first released as a beta. Visit the engine’s official website.

Universal Pictures releases the science fiction film Doom, directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak and starring Karl Urban, The Rock, Ben Daniels, Rosamund Pike, and Yao Chin, to 3,044 US theaters. It is based on the popular Doom series of video games. In it, Space Marines sent to investigate strange events at a research facility on a distant planet find themselves facing off against genetically enhanced killing machines. Produced on a budget of US$60 million, it will gross US$15,488,870 domestically in its opening weekend. Visit the film’s official website. IMDB listing MPAA Rating: R Running Time: 1 hr 40 mins

2006
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the Southern District of New York rules that the FBI’s practice of remotely activating the microphone of a cellphone for use as a so-called “roving bug” for covert surveillance was legal because the agency had obtained a court order authorizing their use and because “alternative methods of investigation either had failed or were unlikely to produce results, in part because the subjects deliberately avoided government surveillance.” The ruling, which sets precedence for law enforcement agencies to use cellphones that appear to be deactivated as bugs sends chills through the privacy lobby. Read the judge’s opinion. [PDF]

Nintendo releases the Wii video game system in Japan. The system features a 729MHz IBM PowerPC Broadway CPU, a 243MHz ATI Hollywood GPU, 512MB internal Flash Memory, and four controller ports. The platforms launch titles include: Elebits, WarioWare: Smooth Moves, and Wii Sports. Visit the system’s official website. Price: ¥25,000 (US$215)