The Great Geek Manual

1588
Tycho Brahe first outlines his “Tychonic system” idea of the structure of the solar system. The Tychonic system is a hybrid, sharing both the basic idea of the geocentric system of Ptolemy, and the heliocentric idea of Nicholas Copernicus. In his De mundi aethorei recentioribus phaenomenis, Brahe’s proposal, retaining Aristotelian physics, kept the the Sun and Moon revolving about Earth in the center of the universe and, at a great distance, the shell of the fixed stars was centered on the Earth. But like Copernicus, he agreed that Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn revolved about the Sun. Thus he could explain the motions of the heavens without “crystal spheres” carrying the planets through complex Ptolemaic epicycles.

1633
Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition, during which he will be charged with professing the belief that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Enemies of Galileo had convinced Pope Urban VIII that the character Simplicio in the Dialogue ineptly defending the Ptolemaic system, was a thinly veiled caricature of himself. A document would be produced alleging that Bellarmine forbade Galileo from discussing Copernican ideas in any way. (Modern scholars determined this document to be a forgery). Galileo faces two charges: disobeying Bellarmine’s order and misleading censors who had published his book. Humiliated and threatened with torture, Galileo will have no choice but to admit guilt, and “abjure, curse and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies…”

1635
The first public school in the United States, the Boston Latin School, is founded.

1741
Andrew Bedford publishes the first American magazine, entitled (conveniently) American Magazine.

1866
Jesse James and his gang commit the first armed bank robbery in United States history during peacetime in Liberty, Missouri.

1880
Thomas Edison observes the Edison effect.

1894
Auguste and Louis Lumière patent the Cinematographe, a combination movie camera and projector.

1912
Robert Millikan begins collecting data from his famous oil drop experiment, the purpose of which was to determine the size of the charge on an electron. He gathers observations on the first of the fifty-eight drops he ultimately publishes. Millikan uses his measurements of the motion of oil drops within an electric field to estimate the fundamental unit of charge. He will earn the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1923 for his work. Read more about the experiment at the Physchem website.

1937
“Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur,” a comic strip known for its attention to historical detail first appears. You can read Prince Valiant at the King Features website.

1946
The world’s first electronic digital computer, Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC) is first demonstrated at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, by John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert. The ENIAC machine occupies a fifteen hundred square foot room. The ENIAC demonstrates that high-speed digital computing is possible using the vacuum tube technology available. Built of some 17,468 electronic vacuum tubes, ENIAC is in the largest single electronic apparatus in the world.

1960
France detonates their first plutonium bomb from a 330-foot tower at the Reggane base in the Sahara, in French Algeria. General Charles de Gaulle set the date for the first atomic explosion to assert France’s independence on the world stage. Thus, he set about building the country’s nuclear capacity, acquiring nuclear aircraft, missiles and submarines.

1980
Apollo Computer is incorporated in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. Apollo helped create the original work stations, small but powerful computer mostly used for engineering. In 1989, Hewlett-Packard Company will acquire Apollo in a US$476 million deal.

1990
The US space probe, Voyager I, photographs the Sun and six planets in one image, from the edge of the solar system. The Sun appears almost star-like in the photo, and the planets are only dots.

1996
Apple announces plans to stop paying quarterly dividends to shareholders with no plans to resume them in the future.

Atari Corporation announces its intentions to merge with Jugi Tandon Storage (JTS) Corporation by granting JTS an extended bridge loan of $25,000,000 to build disk drives. Atari stockholders will hold 60% of the outstanding shares of the merged operations. The company will function under the name of JTS and Atari’s function to develop, manufacture and sell video games will be maintained as a separate division of JTS. Atari stock us one of the most active on the American Stock Exchange for the day.

Grandmaster chess champion, Garry Kasparav, reaches a stalemate in the third of six games against Deep Blue, a computer capable of ‘seeing’ between fifty to one hundred billion chess positions in a mere three minute period.

Wal*Mart and Microsoft announce a joint plan to exploit commercial opportunities on the Internet.

2000
The Fox Broadcasting Company airs an episode of The Simpsons TV in the US featuring a home video game system and the game “Billy Graham’s Bible Blaster”.

The last original “Peanuts” comic strip appears in newspapers one day after Charles M. Schulz dies.

2001
BattleBots releases a new and improved website.

Windows XP is introduced at the Experience Music Project in Seattle, Washington.

2002
Immersion files a lawsuit against Microsoft and Sony for patent infringement of joystick force-feedback technology in the Xbox and PlayStation 2 controllers.

2003
Capcom releases Marvel vs. Capcom 2 for the Xbox in the US. Price: US$39.99

Dino A. Amato, an Ohio Man attacks the Glenn Research Center e-mail server, shutting it down. While employed as a contractor by Affiliated Computer Services at the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, Amato knowingly violated NASA regulations by downloading a zipped file called from the Internet and transmitting it to an e-mail account on the NASA e-mail server at least seven different times, knowing that the zipped file would cause the system to slow down or completely stop processing e-mail messages. The NASA computer security department reportedly incurred losses of twelve thousand dollars inspecting, diagnosing and repairing the e-mail server.

Sega announces plans to merge with Sammy in Japan.

2004
The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics discovers the universe’s largest known diamond, white dwarf star BPM 37093. Read the original press release.

2009
The science fiction television series Dollhouse premieres on FOX with the episode “Ghost”. (No. 1-01) The series is directed by Joss Whedon and stars Eliza Dushku. The series follows Echo, a woman whose memories have been wiped by a secret organization that implants a lifetime of memories into her for the purpose of missions.

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