The Great Geek Manual

1698
Thomas Savery patents the first steam engine.

1858
The Donati Comet was first seen and named after its discoverer.

1875
While Alexander Bell and his assistant Thomas Watson are working on Edison’s “harmonic telegraph,” they stumble upon the inspiration that will eventually lead to the creation of the first telephone. In the transmitter room, Watson produces a twang while trying to free a reed that had been wound too tightly to the pole of its electromagnet. Bell, working in the receiving room, hears the twang and realizes that his dream of speech transmission must be possible, because the complex overtones and timbre of the twang he had just heard bore a striking similarity to the sound of the human voice.

1889
A hydroelectric power plant generates alternating current electricity available to consumers for the first time. A thirteen mile power line links the Willamette Falls Electric Co. power plant to Portland, Oregon. Two 300hp Stilwell & Bierce waterwheels together drove a single phase, 720 kilowatt generator. It isn’t the first hydroelectric power plant. Another one had been demonstrated in Appleton, Wisconsin, on September 30, 1882 with a small dynamo. It is the use of alternating current that makes this station significant because it makes it possible to transmit power over great distances.

1891
Thomas Edison is issued a patent for a “Sextuplex Telegraph,” four years to the day after the application date. A second application made that same day for a similar device won’t be issued until 1894. (US No. 453,601)

1896
The first radio patent is issued to Guglielmo Marconi in England for his wireless telegraphy apparatus for “Improvements in Transmitting Electrical Impulses and Signals, and in Apparatus Therefor.” (UK No. 12,039)

1928
The United States Federal Radio Commission (FRC) grants the first television broadcasting license to Jenkins Television Corporation of Maryland, creating station W3XK. The station will use mechanical scanning system invented by Charles Francis Jenkins. Because of the station’s limited bandwidth (10kH), its programming only appears as silhouettes for electronics enthusiasts to who have built their own receivers.

1937
Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappear over the Pacific Ocean during an attempt to make the first equatorial round-the-world flight. Here last transmission is received by the Coast Guard cutter Itasca off Howland Island. “KHAQQ calling Itasca. We must be on you but cannot see you — but gas is running low….” Read more about Amelia Earhart.

1947
An object speculated to be a UFO crashes near Roswell, New Mexico, though the United States Air Force claims it is a weather balloon.

1953
International Business Machines (IBM) announces the IBM 650, the world’s first mass-produced computers. The IBM 650 line will dominate the computer market through the early sixties. The IBM 650 ran programs from punch cards and stores numbers up to ten digits long on a rotating magnetic drum. The system’s most notable advance over previous IBM systems is that the system would automatically resume its program if interrupted by any “random processing error.” Previous computers would require an operator to restart a program. Read more about the IBM 650 at the IBM website.

1954
The first hands-free speakerphones go into limited production.

1982
Frustrated in his dream of becoming an Air Force pilot due to poor eyesight, California truck driver Larry Walters uses forty-five eight-foot helium weather balloons and a lawnchair to lift himself to an altitude of sixteen thousand feet above San Pedro. Walters had only intended to ascend to an altitude of thirty feet, but his rig rose as an estimated rate of a thousand feet a minute. Ninety minutes after lift-off, after shooting out several of his balloons with a pistol, Walters descended and , after being extricated from the powerlines in which his balloons had become entangled, was promptly arrested by the LAPD. He will eventually be charge with with operating an aircraft near an airport “without establishing and maintaining two-way communications with the control tower,” and fined US$1,500.

1984
Warner Communications sells the Consumer Electronics and Home Computer divisions of Atari Inc. to Tramel Technologies Limited, and the company is renamed the Atari Corporation. The assets of Atari were acquired from Warner Communications by promising US$240 million in long-term notes and a 32% interest in the acquired divisions. Warner communications retains the arcade game and telecommunications (AtariTel) divisions of Atari. The deal with the Tramiels was initiated by Warner with a phone call to Garry Tramiel who was working as a broker at Merill-Lynch in Sunnyvale. J.J. Morgan, president of Atari, issues a memo to employees announcing the acquisition of assets by Tramel Technology, Ltd. Prior to the acquisition, Warner had offered a comprehensive severance package to employees who volunteered to leave Atari. By late Monday morning, several Atari employees such as Jerry Jessop pleaded to be allowed to take advantage of that severance offer, but, the offer was discontinued when the Tramiels took Atari over. Read more about the history of Atari.

1992
Atari withdraws its appeal of the verdict in the antitrust case against Nintendo. Nintendo, in turn, agrees not to seek legal costs from Atari.

A Brief History of Time by British physicist Stephen Hawking, sets a British publishing record for remaining on the nonfiction bestseller list for three and a half years and selling over three million copies in twenty-two languages. (ISBN: 0-593-01518-5) Visit Stephen Hawking’s official website.

1996
20th Century Fox releases the sci-fi movie Independence Day, directed by Roland Emmerich and starring Jeff Goldblum, Will Smith, Bill Pullman, Margaret Colin, Vivica A. Fox, Judd Hirsch, Mary McDonnell, Robert Loggia, and Randy Quaid, to some US theaters. The official release is July 3, but many theaters open the film on the second because it is the same day the the action begins in the film itself. Referred to by many as “the Star Wars of the nineties,” the film is packed with computer generated scenes of buildings, cities, and space ships exploding with amazing realism as aliens attempt an extermination of all mankind. Produced on a budget of US$75 million, the film will gross US$50,228,264 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Length: 2 hrs 33 mins

1997
Columbia Pictures releases the science fiction comedy film Men in Black, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and starring Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith, Linda Fiorentino, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Rip Torn, to 3,020 US theaters. The film was based on the Aircel Comics series The Men in Black by Lowell Cunningham. In it, two agents of a super secret government organization must track down a grotesque alien rampaging through New York City in search of the Galaxy. Produced on a budget of US$90 million, it will gross US$51,068,455 domestically in its opening weekend and US$589 million globally in the course of its release. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 1 hr 37 mins

1998
326 websites are hacked by “MilW0rm”, including the website of Drew Barrymore, The Eagles, Easy Domain, the Kafka Project, and Turk IRC, and replaced with the same page. View an archived version of the defaced website.

Bloomsbury and Scholastic publish the fantasy novel Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling. The book is the second installment in the seven part Harry Potter series. Visit J.K. Rowling’s official website.

1999
The Brazilian website of the Ministério da Ciência & Tecnologia is hacked and redirected anonymously. View an archived version of the defaced website.

2000
The Brazilian website of Cunha Lanfermann Engenharia Ltda. is hacked by “Crime Boys”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

The website of Ed Guy is hacked by “jak”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

The website of Israeli Commercial is hacked by “SuBZeRo”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

2001
Earthlink, Inc. raises the monthly fee of its basic Internet access service from US$19.95 to US$21.95.

The first self-contained artificial heart, the AbioCor, is implanted in Robert Tools. He will survive for 151 days without a living heart.

Intel releases the two fastest processors ever produced by the company. The processors are designed for business installations and intensive video and audio applications. The processors are 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz versions of the Pentium 4. They feature dual-RDRAM memory banks, 400MHz system buses, and 0.18-micron process technology. Price: US$294/US$562 in quantities of 1,000

The Napster peer-to-peer MP3 file-sharing system voluntarily suspends filesharing and shuts down to fix technical problems related to its latest filter upgrade. The filter is an audio fingerprinting technology which was put in place in an effort to prevent copyright violations. At the time of the shut down, Napster’s usage had declined from an average of 220 songs shared per user in February 2001 to an average of 1.5 songs per user.

Paramount’s Kings Island amusement park announces plans for Tomb Raider: The Ride, which will be inaugurated as part of its Thirtieth Anniversary Celebration in 2002. A park press release cites the tremendous success of the Tomb Raider video game franchise, having collectively sold more than twenty-five million units worldwide since the series release in 1996. The park is located outside of Cincinnati, Ohio in King’s Mills.

2002
Steve Fossett becomes the first person to fly solo around the world nonstop in a balloon.

A US federal judge decided that Microsoft is not required to reveal its lobbying contacts.

Yahoo! launches a redesign of it search engine, and the company announces that its other services, such as Yahoo! Mail will soon after be redesigned as well. Along with the new design, new features will be implemented, including a new navigation tools, DHTML drop-down menus, category tabs, and a new user-customizable color scheme.

2003
Warner Bros. releases Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, directed by Jonathan Mostow and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl, Jessy James, and Kristanna Loken, to 3,504 US theater. On the verge of Judgment Day, the most advanced Terminator unit ever, the T-X, arrives from the future to ensure the rise of the machines. The only hope against it is a new upgraded T-800 unit, the T-850, which has been sent back by the human resistance. Together with John Connor, it must stop the rise of the machines or all humanity will fall. Produced on a budget of US$187,300,000, the film will gross US$44,041,440 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: R) Running Time: 1 hr 49 mins

2004
The Cassini space probe makes its first flyby of the moon Titan and the first close-up pictures are sent back to Earth. Due to the planning of the initial orbit, Cassini is passing over the south pole of the moon and at a greater distance than in later flybys. However, during a press conference on June 3, mission scientist will present pictures that are already forcing them to rethink their previous theories. It now seems that the darker and brighter albedo features on the surface represent different materials. However, the icy regions seem to be unexpectedly darker than the areas where other (possibly organic) matter is mixed in with the ice.

2007
A Seattle blogger named Dan Twohig comes across a photo of a US nuclear submarine in dry-dock at the Bangor Sub Base while evaluating real estate properties around Bremerton, Washington using Microsoft’s Virtual Earth. The photo clearly showed the shape of an Ohio-class submarine propeller configuration, which was a classified stealth design that had been careful concealed by the Navy for decades. Twohig, a deck officer with the Washington state ferry, posted a link to the photo on his blog, MonsterMaritime.com. News of the discovery will spread across the web like wildfire, and soon the news outlets across the country will cover the story, raising serious questions regarding the dangers posed by net-accessible aerial photography, which is giving the public access to data previous reserved for government organizations. The debate will have many parallels to the earlier debate on the public’s use of cryptography. View the blog post. View the original image at Virtual Earth. Read more at the Navy Times.