The Great Geek Manual

1610
Through January 15th, Galileo Galilei uses his newly developed telescope to make a series of observation whose subjects will include the craters and mountains of the Moon, four of Jupiter’s moons, the phases of the planet Venus, and Sunspots for the first time.

1903
Thomas Edison films the electrocution of the elephant Topsy, who was being destroyed by her owners after killing three men in as many years, the third being a man who fed her a lit cigarette. The event is held as a public spectacle for a paying audience of 1,500 people at Coney Island, where the elephant had previously been kept on display. Edison was chosen to arrange the electrocution after a batch of cyanide-laced carrots failed. Topsy was led to a special platform, the cameras were set rolling, and the switch was thrown. It took only ten seconds. Afterwards, Edison will exhibit the film around the country as part of an unsuccessful effort to discredit the “dangerous” alternating current of George Westinghouse, while promoting his own direct current electricity system. However, alternate current will eventually be universally adopted as the more practical system for the long-distance transmission of electrical power.

1950
RCA Victor announces that it will manufacture long-playing (LP) records. The announcement comes two years after the company’s chief competitor, Columbia Records, first debuted the “album”.

1958
Sputnik 1, the world’s first satellite, reenters the atmosphere and disintegrates after after ninety-two days in orbit. The 184 pound Sputnik (whose name means “companion” or “fellow traveler”) was launched from Kazakhstan on October 4, 1957. The craft circled the Earth every ninety-five minutes at almost 20,000 miles per hour five hundred miles above the Earth, transmitting a radio signal that had been picked up around the globe.

1959
Luna 1, the first artificial satellite to leave Earth orbit, becomes the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of the Moon after passing within 6,000km of its surface.

1962
The first automatic, unmanned subway train runs in New York City.

1968
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division introduces the IBM System/360 Model 25, a flexible system similar to the earlier IBM 1400 series, which features a multiprocessing system capable of linking two System/360 Model 65 computers together.

1972
Hewlett-Packard (HP) introduces the HP-35, the first handheld scientific calculator. The device takes its name from its thirty-five buttons. It’s release marks the beginning of the end of the widespread use of slide rules. The precision of the algorithms of the HP-35 exceeds that of most mainframes of the day. During the device’s development, the company attempted to use a Burroughs B5500 to validate its calculations, but the developers were ultimately forced to resort to manually comparing the results against mathematical tables. Despite testing, several bugs remain, most notably a rounding error in exponential functions. By the time the company discovers the bug, HP will have already sold twenty-five thousand units. According to stories, when Dave Packard broached the topic of the bugs, one of the group present suggested not telling the public, to which Packard responded by snapping a pencil and saying, “Who said that? We’re going to tell everyone and offer them, a replacement. It would be better to never make a dime of profit than to have a product out there with a problem.” Less than a quarter of the defective units will ultimately be returned in the resulting recall. Visit an HP-35 emulator. Price: US$395 Weight: 9oz

1980
Hewlett-Packard (HP) introduces the small HP-85A scientific desktop computer. It features 16KB RAM, a 32KB ROM, a 32-character wide 5-inch diameter CRT display, a built-in printer, a tape drive, and a keyboard. Code-name: Project Capricorn Price: US$3,250

1984
Franklin Computer agrees to pay US$2.5 million in damages to Apple Computer for copyright infringement of the operating system used on Apple II computers and to cease selling their cloned operating system by April 1.

1993
Pantheon publishes Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman as a hardcover. (ISBN-10: 0679416463) Length: 192 pages Visit the author’s official website.

1994
Sega releases the platform game Monster World IV for the Sega Mega Drive in Japan. CERO: A (All Ages)

1995
At the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco, California, Motorola introduces the Marco Wireless Communicator, based on the Apple Newton. It features wireless communications for US$50-130 per month. Price: US$900 – US$1,400 Weight: 1.8lb

Apple Computer announces that it has licensed its Macintosh operating system to Radius.

1996
Bill Gates is quoted as saying “…an Internet browser is a trivial piece of software. There are at least 30 companies that have written very credible Internet browsers, so that’s nothing… ” in an article entitled The world according to Gates by Don Tennant in InfoWorld Electric magazine.

Intel announces the immediate availability of the 150MHz and 166MHz Pentium processors. They contain the equivalent of over 3.3 million transistors. Price: US$547 and US$749 respectively in 1,000-unit quantities

Ted Hoff meets with the press in a suite at the MGM hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. There, just hours before the opening of the Winter Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Ted formally announces the launch of Atari Interactive, a new division created to develop, manufacture, and market video games for systems other than Atari’s own. The first game to be released by the division will be Tempest 2000 for personal computers. A demo of the game is made available on the Atari Interactive website.

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