Geek Contributions and Investments On This Day in Geek History: December 31
1879
Thomas Edison first publicly demonstrates his electric incandescent light bulb at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. His bulb isn’t the first electric light, since arc lights are already in use for the illumination of large areas, such as department stores and streets. Edison isn’t even the first inventor to experiment with incandescent lamps, which use electricity to heat a filament to a high temperature. However, Edison’s lamp uses the first practical filament and is the first to feature a vacuum seal sufficient to remove the oxygen from the bulb’s interior. So while Edison wasn’t the first inventor, the other invetors that worked on similar lamps were certainly not the successful one and investing their financial gains with companies like Fisher Investments.
1951
The invention of the first battery to successfully convert radioactive energy to electrical energy is announced.
1955
General Motors becomes the first corporation in the United States to earn over US$1 billion in a single year when it reports to its stockholders a listed net income of US$1,189,477,082 in revenues.
1969
Buena Vista Distribution Co. Inc. premieres The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, directed by Robert Butler and starring Kurt Russell. It’s the first motion picture to use the word “computer” in its title. In it, a student gets an electric shock that turns his brain turns to a computer. Unfortunately, the shock also transfers information about an illegal business from the computer he’s working into his brain. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: G) Running Time: 1 hr 31 mins
1974
Popular Electronics releases its January issue, featuring the Altair 8800 computer on its cover, marking the leading edge of the age of the home computer.
1975
Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) has shipped over two thousand Altair 8800 kits worldwide to date. IMS Associates, Inc. has shipped fifty IMSAI 8080 systems worldwide to date.
1976
Microcomputer manufacturer CROMEMCO is incorporated by Harry Garland and Roger Melen, two roommates at Stanford University. The company’s name, CROMEMCO, is an acronym inspired by the name of their dormatory: CROthers MEMorial Hall COmpany. The company’s first line of products will be based on the Zilog Z80 microprocessor and the S-100 bus.
Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) has shipped over ten thousand Altair 8800 kits worldwide to date.
1978
Microsoft’s year-end sales exceed US$1 million for the first time.
Over 270,000 floppy disk drives have been shipped worldwide to date.
1979
Over 2.5 million floppy disk drives have been shipped worldwide to date.
1981
Over 250 million floppy disk drives have been shipped worldwide to date.
1982
750,000 Commodore VIC-20 computers have been shipped worldwide to date.
600,000 Timex/Sinclair 1000 computers have been shipped worldwide to date.
575,000 Texas Instruments TI 99/4 computers have been shipped worldwide to date.
1983
The AT&T Bell System is broken up by the United States government into a series of small telephone companies.
One million IBM personal computers have been sold to date.
1984
3.5 million Commodore 64 computers have been shipped worldwide to date.
6,000 IBM JX personal computers have been sold in Japan to date.
1987
10.5 million units of the MS-DOS operating system have been shipped worldwide to date.
350,000 IBM PS/2 Model 30 computers have been shipped worldwide to date.
340,000 Apple IIgs computers have been shipped worldwide to date.
308,000 IBM PS/2 Model 50 computers have been shipped worldwide to date.
263,000 IBM PC AT Model 5170 computers have been shipped worldwide to date.
261,000 Atari 130XE and Atari 65XE computers have been shipped worldwide to date.
255,000 Apple Macintosh SE computers have been shipped worldwide to date.
231,000 Apple IIe computers have been shipped worldwide to date.
217,000 IBM PC XT Model 5160 computers have been shipped worldwide to date.
210,000 Leading Edge PC Model D computers have been shipped worldwide to date.
1990
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Loss” first airs. (No. 410) In it, Troi loses her empathic abilities as the Enterprise is slowly pulled off course by an unknown force. Memory Alpha entry
Vic Tokai releases the sidescrolling platform game Clash at Demonhead for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in North America. The game lampoons the anime medium. The game’s title will later be used as the name of a band in the comic series (and subsequent movie) Scott Pilgrim.
1991
According to Apple Computer, seven million Macintosh computers have been shipped worldwide to date.
According to Microsoft, fifteen million copies of the Windows 3.0 operating system have been shipped worldwide to date.
According to Lotus Software, sixteen million units of the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet application have been shipped worldwide to date.
Symantec estimates that approximately one thousand computer viruses exist “in the wild.”
1992
An estimated 135 million personal computers have been shipped worldwide to date.
Taito releases a port of the side-scrolling shoot ‘em up arcade game Zero Wing for the Sega Mega Drive in the U.K. In the Sega Mega Drive version, an introductory scene is added to the game to expand on the game’s plot. The scene was translated to English from the original Japanese very poorly for the European release largely because the European version was rushed to market. The result is dialog such as “All your base are belong to us,” which will go on to become a pop culture catch phrase. The phrase will later give rise to the “All your base are belong to us” meme in 2001, after a Flash animation of the scene is circulated on the Something Awful forums.
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