The Great Geek Manual

1855
Michigan State University, the first land grant college in the United States, is established. It will become the model for all other land grant colleges.

1877
The first news dispatch using a telephone in the US, is sent from Salem, Massachusetts to the Boston Globe.

1884
Thomas Alva Edison is issued patents for “An Electric Generator or Motor,” “Insulation of Railroad tracks Used for Electrical Circuits,” “Incandescent Electric Lamp,” and an “Electrical Meter.”

1887
Thomas Alva Edison creates the first sound recording on a foil-wrapped cylinder with the Edisonphone. The recording is of Edison reciting “Mary had a Little Lamb.”

1889
Thomas Alva Edison is issued two patents, one for a “Method of Winding Field Magnets” and another for a “Phonograph.”

1898
The first car crash fatality occurs in Purley Corner, Surrey, England. Henry Lindfield dies when his electric car’s steering gear malfunctions, causing him to crash into an iron post at the foot of a hill. His femoral artery is severed, and, following an amputation, Lindfield will die of shock the next day. The first pedestrian fatally occured on August 17, 1896. The first fatality involving a combustion engine will occur on February 25, 1899.

1940
The adventure series “The Adventures of Superman” premieres on Mutual Radio station WOR in New York City. The groundbreaking series will be of enormous importance to the advancement of the radio medium and the popularization of comics in mainstream media. Of particular note is that the serial is credited with having slowed the spread of the Ku Klux Klan in the northern half of the United States with a series of episodes called “Clan of the Fiery Cross”, in which Superman battles the group.

1941
Ernst Boris Chain and Howard Walter Florey administer the first injection of Penicillin into a human test subject, Albert Alexander. Alexander is an Oxford police officer who was severely scratched on the face by a rose bush. When the scratches turned septic, the Alexander developed blood poisoning and abscesses. The attending doctor reported that “within four days, there was a striking improvement… he was vastly better… with obvious resolution of the abscesses.” When the use of Penicillin is stopped because the physician run out, the infection returns. Alexander dies four weeks later following the discontinuation of treatment.

1961
The USSR launches the world’s first planetary space probe, the Venera 1, on a mission to Venus.

1977
Jonathan Rotenberg, age 13, establishes the Boston Computer Society (BCS), an organization for personal computer owners which will eventually grow into the largest such organization in the world. Four people attended the first meeting of this group, which, at its peak, will reach thirty thousand members representing all fifty states of the US and over forty other nations. Organizations such as Apple Computer, International Business Machines (IBM), and Lotus Software will choose BCS meetings as platforms to make major announcements. By October 1996, the organization’s membership will have shrunk to eighteen thousand, and BCS will unanimously vote to disband.

1985
The Chicago Tribune and the San Francisco Examiner feature a picture of Atari CEO Jack Tramiel with a flute of champagne and the headline, “New Atari is lean, mean and has competitors nervous.” The article reports that, “His ruthless price-slashing when he was head of Commodore International which drove Texas Instruments, Inc., Mattel, Timex and later Coleco out of the low end of the home computer business- and contributed to the losses that put Atari on the block- have his new neighbors more than a little nervous…”

1996
Disgruntled ex-employee Phuoc Bui returns to Packard Bell’s Sacramento offices and fires forty shots. The incident ends with no other employees injured when a security guard shoots Bui in the shoulder. Bui had been fired the previous Friday for distributing literature encouraging co-workers to take up arms against management.

Netscape Communications announces an agreement to acquire Paper Software, a provider of distributed 3D graphics. Visit the official Netscape website

1997
Namco, Poligon Pictures, and Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) announce a joint venture to establish Dream Pictures Studio with a combined capitalization of about US$1.6 million. The studio, which will be founded on March 12, will focus on producing computer generated films.

The website of PC Connection is hacked by “WWNW”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

1998
The website of Arthur Register, Jr. is hacked by “TechVoodoo : No|d”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

The website of Concepts Visual is hacked by “TechVoodoo : No|d”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

The website of Industry Specific, Inc. is hacked by “TechVoodoo : No|d”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

2000
Tor Books publishes the science fiction novel Blind Waves by Steven Gould as a hardcover. (ISBN-10: 0312864450) Length: 352

2001
The Anna Kournikova virus is released by Jan de Wit, a twenty year old Dutch man using the handle “OnTheFly”. The virus spreads through email messages claiming to contain a picture of tennis player Anna Kournikova. It was written using a Visual Basic Worm Generator, written by “[K]Alamar”, and it will rapidly spread to tens of thousands of computers, prompting many organizations to temporarily shut down their email servers as a precautionary measure. De Wit will be arrested on February 14th and later be sentenced to 150 hours of community service.

NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft touches down on the “saddle” region of 433 Eros, becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid. Visit the official NEAR Mission website.

The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals orders Napster to stop facilitating the unauthorized swapping of copyrighted material.

2002
Sega releases the platform game Sonic Adventure 2 Battle for the GameCube in the US. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: E (Everyone)

2004
Large portions of the source code of Microsoft Windows 2000 and nearly all of the source code of Windows NT 4.0 are illegally posted on the internet. Microsoft is unable to pinpoint the source of the leak of the closely guarded code, but, following an preliminary investigation, it will be determined that the leak isn’t the result of a breach in the the company’s corporate network, Shared Source Initiative or its Government Security Program, which enable business partners and governments to legally access the source code. Read Microsoft’s official statement on the matter.