The Great Geek Manual

1877
At the offices of the Scientific American magazine, Thomas Edison demonstrates his improved phonograph, using a cylinder wrapped with tinfoil instead of wax-coated paper. Just the day prior, he made the first recording using the device to demonstrate it to John Kruesi, the machinist who built it from Edison’s sketches.

1909
Leo Baekeland of Yonkers, New York, receives the first US patents for a thermosetting artificial plastic. (US No. 942,699) The patent for “an improvement in methods of making insoluble condensation products of phenol-formaldehyde” covers the creation of what Baekeland dubbed Bakelite. Bakelite is the beginning of the plastics industry. It is a nonflammable material cheaper and more versatile than other known plastics. It will be used in a wide variety of application, from inexpensive jewelry to sophisticated electronics.

1930
W1XAV in Boston, Massachusetts broadcasts video from the CBS radio orchestra program, The Fox Trappers. The broadcast features the first television commercial in the United States, an advertisement for I.J. Fox Furriers, the radio show’s sponsor. The station will be fined for running the advertisement, however, as the station is not authorized to sell commercial television time. (There are some references to an earlier ad aired by W1XAY in Lexington, Massachusetts in 1928, but no substantive evidence.)

1938
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper begins a two-year experiment to deliver an abbreviated version of the paper by UHF radio to fifteen households equipped with special receivers.

1945
Universal Pictures releases the horror film House of Dracula, directed by Erle C. Kenton and starring Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine, Martha O’Driscoll, and Lionel Atwill, to US theaters. It is a sequel to House of Frankenstein and features Universal’s three most popular monsters: Count Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and The Wolf Man. IMDB listing

1960
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) releases the science fiction film Village of the Damned, directed by Wolf Rilla and starring George Sanders, Barbara Shelley, Martin Stephens, and Michael Gwynn, to US theaters. It is a fairly faithful adaptation of the novel The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham. It was produced on a budget of US$200,000. IMDB listing

1962
The UK electrical engineering firm Ferranti introduces Atlas, the world’s most powerful computer, at an inauguration ceremony at Manchester University, in England. Among its advances are the world’s first paging system and pipelined operations. (In computer operating systems, paging is a method by which memory allocation algorithms, also called memory address translation, divide computer memory into small partitions, and allocate memory using a page as the smallest building block.)

1972
Apollo 17, the sixth and last Apollo moon mission, is launched from Cape Canaveral. The crew take the photograph known as “The Blue Marble” as they leave the Earth. Flight Commander Eugene Cernan will be the last man to step on the Moon for decades to come.

1978
What will become the most famous image of the initial staff of the staff of Microsoft is taken. From left to right the picture includes, in the top row: Steve Wood, Bob Wallace, Jim Lane. In the middle row: Bob O’Rear, Bob Greenberg, Marc McDonald, Microsoft’s first salaried employee, Gordon Letwin, lead architect of the OS/2 operating system. In the bottom row: Co-founder Bill Gates, Technical writer Andrea Lewis, Marla Wood, Co-founder Paul Allen.

1979
Paramount Pictures releases the science fiction film Star Trek: The Motion Picture, directed by Robert Wise and starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols and Majel Barrett, to 857 US theaters. In it, Admiral Kirk resumes command of the Starship Enterprise in order to intercept, examine, and hopefully stop a destructive space entity that is rapidly approaching Earth. Produced on a budget of US$35 million, it will gross US$11,926,421 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: G) Running Time: 2 hrs 12 mins

1988
Erik Labs releases BiModem, a new file transfer protocol that allows users to simultaneously upload and download files, and initiate chats during the file transfer. The protocol was developed for use in BBS systems. Download an archived version of the application.

1989
US Congressman Dennis Eckart announces at a large news conference that he is recommending an investigation of Nintendo by the US Justice Department.

1990
At Universal Studios in Los Angeles, California, Nintendo holds the Nintendo PowerFest grand finale to their nation-wide video game competition, over three days.

1993
Microsoft announces the release of its first software products designed especially for children, Creative Writer and Fine Artist.

1995
Adobe Systems announces it will license the Java programming language from Sun Microsystems, and integrate Java support into Adobe Acrobat as well as Adobe PageMill.

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and other company executives hold a seven-hour brief and workshop on Microsoft’s Internet strategy in Seattle, Washington. Microsoft announces that it has licensed Java from Sun Microsystems and will add extensions to the technology for use with the Microsoft Network. Microsoft also announces that it has licensed browser technology from Spyglass for Windows 3.1 and the Macintosh, that it will offer Internet Explorer 2.0 on all platforms free of charge, and that the Microsoft Network will be redesigned as a website.

Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones holds the first online multimedia conference using CompuServe CB from London.

The US spacecraft Galileo arrives at Jupiter, more than six years after its launch from the Space Shuttle Atlantis, during Mission STS-34. It fires its main engine for forty-nine minutes to establish an orbit and releases an atmospheric probe, which will relay information on the structure and composition of the planet.

Pages: 1 2