The Great Geek Manual

1844
The first “telephone” is demonstrated by Captain J.N. Taylor of the British Royal Navy. The device is not, however, the same technology that will later be known as a telephone. Rather, it is the original name for what will later be called a fog horn.

1912
Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth (The Loves of queen Elizabeth), released under the title “Queen Elizabeth,” becomes the first foreign feature-length film released in the United States. The four-reel, fifty-three minute silent film tells the story of the affair between Elizabeth I of England and Earl of Essex. IMDb entry

1949
Thomas J. Watson Jr. of International Business Machines (IBM) predicts that all of the moving parts in machines will be replaced by electronics within just ten years during a sales meeting. Read more about Watson at the official IBM website.

1960
The first Etch-A-Sketch goes on sale. Within twenty-five years, over fifty million of the devices will be sold. Visit the official Etch-A-Sketch website.

NASA launches the Echo I communication satellite, the first passive satellite, aboard a Delta rocket. The satellite will be used to redirect radio, telephone, and television signals across continents. It consists primarily of a 30.5 meter diameter Mylar polyester film balloon with a highly reflective surface that will be visible to the naked eye from across the Earth. Before it burns up upon re-entering the atmosphere on May 24, 1968, it will be seen by more people than any other man-made object in space.

The USSR launches the Sputnik 5 spacecraft with two dogs, Belka (”Squirrel”) and Strelka (”Little Arrow”), forty mice, two rats, and a variety of plants. It is the first space mission to send animals into orbit and then successfully return them.

1978
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) announces the IBM 3663 Models 1P and 3P programmable terminals, the IBM 3651 Model 25 and Model 75 store controllers, and three new supermarket programs designed to customize checkout operations and in-store reports.

1982
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial breaks box-office records by surpassing US$100 million in box office sales within the first thirty-one days of its opening. The film was produced on a budget of US$10.5 million.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) introduces the HP-86 microcomputer. Price: US$1,795

Hewlett-Packard (HP) introduces an upgraded HP-87 microcomputer, featuring increased memory.

1985
Private Sector BBS, the official bulletin board system (BBS) of 2600 Magazine, is seized by police in a raid for alleged “complicity in computer theft” under a new, untested New Jersey statute (2C:20-25). Police seize the server, along those of at least six of boards, after Middlesex County police uncovered a credit card ring on another, completely unrelated BBS. Following the seizure, the board’s operators alerted the media and bombarded the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office with requests for information until the prosecutor’s office scheduled a press conference for July 16. At the press conference, the prosecutor’s alleged that the board’s sysop, along with six others, had repositioned satellites and done “strange things” to the defense department. Ultimately, despite a large number of absurd charges, the equipment was returned and all charges were dropped, except a single fourth-degree misdemeanor. Read more at The Art of Hacking.

1988
The Phobos 2 space probe is launched by the Soviet Union on a mission to study Mars and its moons Deimos and Phobos. It will return thirty-eight photos with resolutions of up to forty meters before suffering a critical failure in March 1989. View a collection of the photos returned.

1989
The Star Tours attraction opens at Tokyo Disneyland in Japan.

1990
Nintendo releases the console roleplaying game (RPG) Final Fantasy video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in North America. The game will become a major influence on future games, popularizing the console role-playing game genre.

1993
Business Week runs a cover story emtitled “Media Mania… digital – interactive – multimedia – the rush is on”, in which Time Warner CEO Gerard Levin predicted that interactive television would reach 20% of US homes by the turn of the century, providing “anything, anywhere,” while electronic books and magazines would change the world.

Mike Feibus calls the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star initiative “a marketing gimmick with about as much meaning as a ‘Lite’ label on a package of bacon” in an article in the Microprocessor Report.

1995
Tatu Ylonen of Helsinki University of Technology in Finland releases the first version of the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol for establishing a secure connections between two computers over an encrypted channel as freeware. Ylonen developed the protocols after the university network fell victim to a password-sniffing attack. By the end of the year, the protocol’s user base will have exploded to twenty thousand users in some fifty countries.

1996
Atari receives the approval necessary to merge with Jugi Tandon Storage, Inc. (JTS) from the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), pending a shareholder’s vote. JTS is a manufacturer of storage hardware. Visit the official Atari website.

Netscape achieves its ten billionth hit when one of the company’s thirty-eight million users logs on with the Netscape Navigator to browse the internet. Visit the official Netscape website.

1999
Packard Bell NEC introduces a line of inexpensive personal computers, ranging from a US$499 Celeron system to a US$999 Pentium III system.

Sony Computer Entertainment of America (SCEA) announces that its racing game Gran Turismo has surpassed the two million unit sales mark in the United States, making it Sony’s best-selling game title ever. The game has sold over 6.86 million units globally, including 2.38 million in Japan and 2.48 million in Europe. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: E (Everyone)

2000
The Brazilian website of Universidade de Sorocaba is hacked by the hacking group “cyb3r fuck3rs”. The website is hosted on a server running Windows NT. View an archived version of the defaced website.

EBay announces that the company has asked for a United States federal judge to bar Braxton Anderson, age 33, of Chicago, Illinois from using its auction service. Anderson allegedly disrupted the “normal course of conduct” with repeated use of foul language.

Microsoft acquires NetGames. The company’s technology will later become MSN Games.

Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 5.5 for Windows, featuring improved support for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), Dynamic HTML (DHTML), and Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language.

Raymond Torricelli, age 20, of New Rochelle, New York is arrested for allegedly hacking into two NASA computers and using one of them to host a chat room on the topic of computer hacking.

2001
The hacker group “World of Hell” (WoH) defaces 679 websites in just one minute. The sites targeted include the official websites of Kate Moss Site and Ricky Martin, Applemactech.com, ComputerCrime.edu, Consolewar.com, Devspot.com, and i-surf.net.

2002
DreamWorks released the drama Road to Perdition, directed by Sam Mendes and starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Jude Law, Tyler Hoechlin, and Daniel Craig, to 1,797 US theaters. The film is based on the graphic novel of the same name by Max Allan Collins. Produced on a budget of US$80 million, it will gross US$22,079,481 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: R) Running Time: 1 hr 59 mins

Ranchero Software releases the desktop news aggregator NetNewsWire as shareware for the Mac OS X. It is one of the first desktop RSS readers to be released for any platform.

Touchstone Pictures releases the science fiction horror film Reign of Fire, directed by Rob Bowman and starring Christian Bale, Matthew McConaughey, Izabella Scorupco, Gerard Butler, Alice Krige, and Ben Thornton, to 2,629 US theaters. In it, a race of prehistoric dragons are reawakened deep in an English mine. As they reproduce, their feeding depletes the world’s resources, driving the human races towards extinction. Produced on a budget of US$60 million, it will gross US$15,632,281 domestically in its opening weekend. Visit this film’s official website. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 1 hr 49 mins

2004
The Twelfth World Computer Chess Championship comes to an end, leaving Deep Junior the victor. Deep Junior was programmed by Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky.

2005
Apple Computer releases the Mac OS X 10.4.2 operating system. Visit the official Apple OS X website.

Investigators with the European Commission raid the offices of Intel and computer manufacturers in several countries as part of an antitrust investigation.

2006
The inflatable spacecraft Genesis I is launched into a Low Earth orbit aboard an ISC Kosmotras Dnepr rocket from the Dombarovskiy missile base near Yasniy, Russia. The craft’s mission is to determine the long-term viability of inflatable space structures. In particular, the mission will test whether inflatable structures can maintain a constant internal pressure and temperature suitable for life. Read more at the BBC.

Microsoft launches the “Xbox Live Arcade Wednesdays” program, under which a new Xbox Live Arcade game will be released every Wednesday for the remainder of the summer. At the conclusion of the program, Microsoft will continue to release new games on Wednesdays. Visit the official Xbox Live Arcade website.

Version 1.2. of the PC-BSD operating system (OS) is released. PC-BSD is a Unix-like operating system designed to be easy-to-install and read-to-use. Visit the official PC-BSD website.

2007
Hewlett-Packard (HP) announces the release of the HP 35s scientific calculator, featuring a “retro” design to commemorate the original HP-35, the world’s first scientific calculator, which was released in 1972. Visit the official HP 35s website.

Netscape Communications releases version 9.0b2 (Beta 2) of the Netscape Navigator web browser. Visit the official Netscape Navigator website.