The Great Geek Manual

1616
After asserting that the Earth moves around the Sun, Galileo Galilei is told by Cardinal Bellarmine “to give up altogether the false doctrine… and if you should refuse.. you should be imprisoned.”

1836
Samuel Colt patents the revolver. In the patent, Colt describes “the many advantages in the use of these guns,” including “the great rapidity in the succession of discharges, which is effected merely by drawing back the hammer and pulling the trigger,” “the facility in loading them,” and “the weight and location of the cylinder, which give steadiness to the hand.” Read more about the history of Colt at the Web Archive.

1837
Thomas Davenport, a Vermont blacksmith, patents the first practical electrical motor as “an application of magnetism and electro-magnetism to propelling machinery.” (US No. 132) The rotating electromagnets have cores of soft iron, wound with copper wire insulated with layers of silk. The wires from the coil run parallel down the shaft to touch copper contacts on the base. These wires make contact with different plates at each half-turn. When the contacts are connected to opposite poles of the battery supplying current, provision is made to reverse the direction of the current in the rotating coils at each half-turn such that magnetic repulsion is maintained between the rotating coil and the pole of the fixed magnet they face at that point in the shaft’s rotation. Read more about the Electric Motor in the Mechanical Engineering article, “The Blacksmith’s Motor. Electricity, magnetism, and motion: A self-taught Vermonter pointed the direction for lighting the world” by Fran Wicks at the Mechanical Engineering archives.

1899
The first car accident fatality involving a vehicle powered by a gasoline-fueled engine occurs in Grove Hill Harrow, England. The accident occurs while the car, a Daimler Wagonette, is being demonstrated to Major James Richer, Department Head of the Army & Navy Stores. Mr. Sewell, the driver, is killed on the spot, but the passenger, Major Richer, dies four days later, never having regained consciousness. Richer will be Britain’s first vehicular passenger fatality. About a year earlier, on February 12, 1898, Henry Lindfield will become the first person to die in a collision.

1927
A conversation between San Francisco, California and London, England establishes a new telephone long distance record of 7,287 miles.

1928
The Federal Radio Commission (FRC) issues the first television license in the US to Charles Jenkins Laboratories for experimental station W2XCR in Washington, DC. The first commercial television license won’t be issued until 1941.

1930
The first bank check photographing device patent is issued in the US to its inventor, George Lewis McCarthy, who called it the Checkograph. (US No. 1,748,489) The machine photographs checks onto 16mm motion picture film using a conveyor belt.

1952
The Windscale plutonium plant at Sellafield, on the Irish Sea coast in Cumberland, England, goes into operation. It wasn’t public knowledge that Britain was developing nuclear weapons until Winston Churchill announced plans to test the first British-made atomic bomb on February 17, 1952. The first British test of an atomic bomb will be conducted in the Hurricane project on the Monte Bello Islands off the northwest coast of Australia on October 3, 1952. Read more about the Hurricane project at the Nuclear Weapon Archive.

1959
The Automatically Programmed Tools (APT) language is first demonstrated. APT is an high-level language for conveying instructions to machine tools used in computer-assisted manufacturing.

1969
NASA launches Mariner 6 on a mission to make a fly-by of Mars.

1971
The first unit of the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, Canada’s first commercial nuclear power station, goes online.

1977
Soyuz 24 returns to Earth.

1979
Soyuz 32 is launched on a mission to convey two cosmonauts to the Salyut 6 space station.

1980
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominates the science fiction film The Black Hole for Oscar Awards in both the Cinematography and Visual Effects categories.

1983
According to Twin Galaxies, Kevin Leisner scores a record-setting 809,990 points playing Sega’s Pengo at the Mission Control arcade in Racine, Wisconsin. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

1989
Craig Neidorf, best known by the web handle “Knight Lightning,” publishes documentation for Bell South’s Enhanced 911 system (E911) in Phrack electronic newsletter number twenty-four. The documentation was stolen from the BellSouth AIMSX computer network in September 1988, and they appear in an article entitled, “Control Office Administration Of Enhanced 911 Service by The Eavesdropper“. Neidork will be indicted for the theft and publication in early 1990. Phrack is co-published by “Taran King”. Read archived issues of Phrack online.

1997
International Business Machines (IBM) releases Object REXX, an object-oriented scripting language based on the REXX language. On October 12, 2004, IBM will release the language as open source software. Visit the official Object REXX website at IBM.

Two law firms representing shareholders file suit against America Online (AOL) in Alexandria, Virginia District Court accusing the company’s executives, specifically Steve Case, of insider trading. The suit alleges that eighteen insiders took advantage of artificial stock values which peaked at US$71 in May of 1996.

1998
Computers at the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) and United States Department of Defense are hacked by Ehud Tenebaum using the web handle “Analyzer”. The MIT computer is running an out dated version of Linux. After gaining access to an account, “Analyzer” takes advantage of other security holes in order to install a packet-sniffer, which he then uses to collect user names and passwords.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Pentagon step up investigations of successful efforts made by hackers to break into US military computers over the past two weeks. The military denies penetration into classified areas; however, they admit that the hackers obtained information that they should not have been able to download.

1999
Elbrus International introduces the 1200MHz Elbrus E2K processor, with performance speeds three to five times faster than the Intel Merced processor, while still running all legacy MS-DOS and Windows software.

A seventeen year old female hacker from Belgium, calling herself “Gigabyte” takes credit for writing the first-ever virus, “Sharpei”, written in Microsoft’s newest programming language, C# (C sharp). Read more about Gigabyte at TechTV.

2000
The website of Levi’s Music is hacked by “GForce Pakistan”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

The website of Nike Taiwan is hacked by “VUGO and Dr_Delete”. two Brazilian hackers. View an archived version of the defaced website.

The website of Yamaha Motor Europe is hacked by “Team Infinity”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

2002
“Gigabyte,” a seventeen year-old female Belgian hacker and a member of the virus-writing group “Metaphase”, takes credit for writing the first-ever virus written in Microsoft’s new C# programming language, “Sharpei”, by posting its source code on her website. Sharpei is also only the second piece of malicious code to target Microsoft’s new .NET platform. It is a worm that spreads via Outlook, claiming to be an official Microsoft software update. In an online interview March 1st, Gigabyte claims that she wrote the worm to make a social point as well as a technical one. “I want to let people (and especially guys) know there ARE girls out there who like computers and for more than games. I think that’s quite important … for all girls out there who know something about computers but are surrounded by guys who think they’re all stupid [...]” On February 14, 2004, Kim Vanvaeck will be arrested at her home in Mechelen, Belgium and charged with eleven counts of computer data sabotage.

2004
Microsoft’s Tokyo offices are raided by Japanese fair trade officials acting under the suspicion that anti-monopoly laws had been violated. As a result, Microsoft will remove a contract clause which prevents computer firms from suing Microsoft for patent violations. Read more at the BBC News website. Visit the official Microsoft website.

The Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Hatchery” first airs. (No. 317) In it, Archer goes to such lengths to protect a Xindi hatchery that the rest of the crew begin to consider mutiny. Memory Alpha entry

2005
The Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Divergence” first airs. (No. 416) In it, the crew searches for Phlox while struggling with sabotage. Memory Alpha entry

2008
Kevin Martin, the Chairman of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), publicly announces that the agency is “ready, willing and able,” to prevent broadband Internet service providers from interfering with their subscribers access to the Internet. The statement prefaces a day-long hearing held over allegations that Comcast, one of the nation’s largest cable providers, had been blocking or throttling access to bittorrent applications.