The Great Geek Manual

1214
The University of Oxford receives its chartered.

1840
Samuel F.B. Morse receives a patent for his telegraphy signals, known as Morse code. (US No. 1,647)

1877
Alexander Graham Bell installs the world’s first commercial telephone service in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. In the first month, Bell will sell only six telephones. By September, 778 telephones will be in use.

1926
Herr Schaetzle demonstrates a wireless phone for automobiles in Berlin, Germany.

1939
Ernst Heinkel tests the world’s first aircraft to be propelled solely by a liquid-fueled rocket, the He-176 experimental rocket airplane, flies for first time in Peenemunde, Germany. It’s powered by an engine based on Hellmuth Walter’s hydrogen peroxide-based rocket and piloted by Erich Warsitz. It’s a small aircraft, without an enclosed canopy, built almost entirely out of wood with a fixed, tricycle undercarriage. The fifty second flight of the He-176 isn’t spectacular, but it does provide a “proof of concept” for rocket propulsion. Read more at Luft 46.

1950
The National Bureau of Standards dedicates the Standards Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC) in Washington as a laboratory for testing components and systems for setting computer standards. The SEAC was the first computer to use all-diode logic, a technology more reliable than vacuum tubes, and was the first stored-program computer completed in the United States. Magnetic tape in the external storage units stored programming information, coded subroutines, numerical data, and output. Read more the the Computer Museum.

1982
According to Twin Galaxies, Ron Kussman, age 20, scores a record-setting 63,983,475 points on Missile Command by Atari Inc. after playing the game for fourty-five hours and thirty minutes at the Star Arcade in Upland, California. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

1983
James Towne resigns as chief operating officer (COO) of Microsoft. Visit the official Microsoft website.

1989
International Business Machines (IBM) announces the 486/25 Power Platform processor upgrade kit for the IBM PS/2 Model 70-A21. Price is US$3,995

Lotus Development releases Version 3.0 of the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet application for MS-DOS and OS/2 two years after its initial announcement. Price: US$495 or US$150 (upgrade)

1990
The asteroid Eureka 5261, the first known Mars Trojan asteroid is discovered at Mt Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California. Visit the official Palomar Observatory website.

1993
The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “In the Hands of the Prophets” first airs. (No. 120) In it, friction escalates when Vedek Winn arrives on the station to discover that Keiko O’Brien is teaching the children about the prophets as if they were just another alien species. Memory Alpha entry

1995
The ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter attraction opens in Tomorrowland in the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. It will close permanently on October 12, 2003.

1999
The TNT television network airs the made-for-television movie Pirates of Silicon Valley, directed by Martyn Burke and starring Noah Wyle and Anthony Michael Hall, in the US. It is based on the book, Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer, by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine The movie is a docu-drama that follows the rivalry between Steve Jobs of Apple Computer and Bill Gates of Microsoft in the early days of the personal computer industry. Visit this film’s official website.

2000
The Brazilian website of Joffo Luiz Baroni is hacked by “Artech”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

British Telecom (BT) claims all rights to hyperlinks based on the strength of a US patent granted in 1989, which is still in effect while similar patents granted by governments around the globe have expired. The claim is widely criticized as absurd. Critics note that Ted Nelson published the earliest mention of hyperlinks in 1965, which inspired Tim Berners Lee to conceive of the World Wide Web. This is just another in the line of similar patent cases. British Telecom’s legal claim will finally be rejected by a judge on August 23, 2002.

International Business Machines (IBM) announces the availability of the 1GB Microdrive, the world’s smallest, lightest and largest capacity mobile hard disk by a factor of three.

The Philippine National Bureau of Investigation charges Onel de Guzman, age 24, under a credit-card fraud law for releasing the Love Bug worm. De Guzman, a computer science student, openly admits to having written the password-stealing program as a school project. However, De Guzman’s attorney called a news conference to explain that the worm was released into the wild by mistake. Estimates of the damage caused by the virus, released on May 4, however, have mounted into the billions of dollars, and because the Philippines have no law regarding computer crimes, De Guzman had to be charged with fraud.

The website of IRC Net in the Netherlands is hacked by “_BooStaR_”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

The website of the Yale University School of Law is hacked by “Cyb3r Fuck3rs”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

2001
Ellen Spertus, age 32, wins the distinguished title of Sexiest Geek Alive 2001 in San Jose, California. Spertus is a womens’ computer science professor at Mills College in Oakland, California. She has a doctorate from MIT. As a prize, Spertus wins a home computer and a trip for two from geekcruises.com. To accept her award, she wears a PVC corset decorated with a printed-circuit board pattern and a black slit skirt, with a slide ruler holstered a to her leg.

US security company ZixIt reports that a cracker has accessed the credit card database of Anacom Communications Inc., an independent subsidiary of ZixIt Corp and that the FBI is investigating the incident.

2003
Universal Pictures releases the action film Hulk, directed by Ang Lee and starring Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, and Nick Nolte, to 3,660 US theaters. Fans were so discontent with the film that, in 2008, the franchise would be rebooted with the film The Incredible Hulk. Produced on a budget of US$137 million, it will gross US$62,128,420 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 2 hr 15 mins

The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit charitable organization that operates Wikipedia and its related sites, is founded in St. Petersburg, Florida. The same day, the Wikiquote site is first created.

2005
Viacom announces that it has acquired Neopets, Inc. in a deal valued at approximately US$160 million. According to Viacom, Dohring, the current CEO of Neopets, Inc., along with other Neopets, Inc. senior managers, will continue to hold their positions after the acquisition is completed. After being bought by Viacom, management of the company will be turned over to MTV. Visit the official Neopets website.

2006
International Business Machines (IBM) and Georgia Institute of Technology jointly announce that they have achieved a record speed for a silicon-based chip of 500GHz by freezing it at a temperature of -268°C (-451°F) using liquid helium. The same chip operated at approximately 350GHz while at room temperature.

Version 3.0 of the operating system Damn Small Linux, a Linux distribution that emphasizes size over function. The developers of the system claim that it will never grow larger than 50MB. Visit the official Damn Small Linux website.

Version 9.0 of the Opera web browser is released. It’s the first cross-platform browser to pass the Acid2 web standard test. This version introduces a built-in bittorrent client, CSS3 support, and Widgets. Visit the official Opera website.

2008
According to VeriSign Inc., manager of the .net domain, the number of internet domains registered under China’s .cn top-level domain have surpassed the number of domains registered under the .net domain for the first time in the first quarter of 2008, 11.8 million to 11.6 million.