The Great Geek Manual

1638
A lunar eclipse becomes the first astronomical event recorded in the United States.

1783
Antonie Lavoisier announces to the French Academy of Sciences that water is the product of the combination of hydrogen and oxygen. However, this discovery was made earlier by the English chemist Henry Cavendish.

1876
The first public demonstration of Bell’s speaking telephone is given at the Centennial Exhibition, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1925
Warner Bros. forms the Vitaphone Company in partnership with Western Electric to develop and exploit sound-on-disc technology for cinemas. Development work takes place at the Vitagraph Studio in Brooklyn, New York, under an eleven person team from Bell Telephone Labs under British-born Stanley S A Watkins.

1951
At 4:35pm, the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) televises the one-hour premiere of commercial color television with a program named Premiere. It is transmitted, using the CBS Field Sequential System from New York to four other cities, including: Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. The programs includes entertainment by such leading personalities as Ed Sullivan, Arthur Godfrey, Faye Emerson, Sam Levenson, Robert Alda, Isabel Bigley, and Garry Moore. CBS executives William S. Paley and Dr. Frank Stanton will also make statements. The system uses a field-sequential system of 405 lines, 144 fields per second. This system is incompatible with the NTSC black-and-white standard and will consequently fail commercially. Due to the Korean War, CBS will discontinue color broadcasting four months later on October 20, 1951. Read more about the history of CBS television.

1958
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) directs AT&T to cut its rates for privately leased telephone circuits by about fifteen percent. The order marks another step in the long struggle between the telephone company and the US government over anti-trust concerns. Visit the official AT&T website.

1966
The first Soviet weather satellite, Kosmos 122, is launched.

1967
The ART-B, Early Bird, and Lana Bird satellites broadcast the first global satellite television program, “Our World,” to an audience of 400 million people. “For the first time ever, linking five continents and bringing man face to face with mankind,” eulogizes the BBC press release, “in places as far apart as Canberra and Cape Kennedy, Moscow and Montreal, Samarkand and Söderfors, Takamatsu and Tunis.” However, the USSR will withdrew from the broadcast at the last moment. Performers in nineteen nations contribute a six minute segment showcasing their home nation. Most notably, England’s contribution will be a performance by the The Beatles of the song All You Need is Love.

1974
Texas Instruments (TI) is awarded a patent for the TI-2500 DataMath microcalculator which it applied for in 1967. (US No. 3,819,921) The inventors are recognized as James H. Van Tassel, Jerry D. Merryman, and Jack St. Clair Kilby.

1981
Paul Allen of Microsoft proposes to Rod Black of Seattle Computer Products that Microsoft buy all rights to 86-DOS for US$30,000 plus a free license to Microsoft’s 8086 macro assembler and linker. Microsoft is subsequently restructured to become an incorporated business in its home state of Washington, changing its name to “Microsoft, Inc.” As part of the restructuring, Bill Gates becomes president of the company and Chairman of the Board, and Paul Allen becomes Executive Vice President. Founded six years earlier by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Microsoft grew out of the friends’ development of BASIC for the MITS Altair home computer kit.

1982
Warner Bros. releases the sci-fi film Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos, and Daryl Hannah, opens in 1,295 US theaters. The film is based on the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? In the film, the Atari logo is one of many corporate logos ablaze in neon as part of the futuristic background of Los Angeles’ Chinatown in 2019. Deckard is a Blade Runner, a police detective of the future who hunts down and terminates replicants, artificially created humans. He is commissioned to terminate four “skin jobs,” a slang term for replicants, who have returned to Earth. The city that provides the backdrop for the film is a sprawling, bleak place. Produced on a budget of US$28 million, the film will gross US$6,150,002 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: R) Running Time: 1 hr 57 mins

The Special Olympics are held Friday, June 25 through Sunday Sunday, June 27 at Drake Stadium on the campus of the University of California Los Angeles. Atari Inc. representatives take part in the parade and help Special Olympians play Atari video games that are set up in an Atari promotional tent. Don Osborne also presents US$2,500 to the Special Olympics on behalf of Atari.

Universal Pictures releases the sci-fi horror film John Carpenter’s The Thing directed by John Carpenter and starring Kurt Russell, to 840 US theaters. It is a remake of the 1951 Howard Hawks film The Thing from Another World. In the film, the crew of an American scientific research outpost in Antarctica find themselves battling a parasitic alien organism capable of perfectly imitating its victims. They soon discover that they don’t know which members of the team have already been assimilated, and their paranoia threatens to tear them apart. Produced on a budget of US$10 million, the film will gross US$3,107,897 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: R) Running Time: 1 hr 49 mins

1985
Microsoft’s Bill Gates suggests in a memo sent to Apple Computer’s John Sculley that Apple Computer should license Macintosh technology to a few significant developers. “The industry has reached the point where it is now impossible for Apple to create a standard out of their innovative technology without support from, and the resulting credibility of other personal computer manufacturers. Thus, Apple must open the Macintosh architecture to have the independent support required to gain momentum and establish a standard,” wrote Gates. It would take Apple a decade to begin licensing Mac technology.

1992
Version 1a revision 10 of Synchronet, a multiplatform bulletin board system (BBS) software package, is released. It is the first BBS package to support QWK message networking, natively without requiring any external utilities.

1997
The front page of the Geocities free web host service is hacked by “fr0lic”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

The space-station Mir suffers a near-fatal mishap when an unmanned Progress ferry freighter spacecraft being docked via remote control by Russian cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev accidentally rams into the Spektr science module, putting a hole in the pressure vessel and damaging its solar arrays beyond use. To salvage the station, which consists of a core, a connecting node, and five science modules, crew members severed electrical and data connections between Spektr and the rest of the station and then sealed it off. They save the station but lose about half of their electrical power.

1998
Microsoft releases its Windows 98 operating system. This update on Windows 95 adds support for multiple monitors, television tuner cards, WebTV, disk partitions greater than 2GB with a FAT32 file system, additional USB drivers, and the Active Desktop feature. The support for USB devices and disk partitions are the system’s top selling points. Many retailers begin selling the software at midnight. A Comp USA store in Dallas, Texas, reports selling about five hundred upgrades in a single hour. Over 271,000 units of the software are sold on the first day alone. The system was marketed under the slogan “Works better. Plays better.” Several US attorneys tried to block its release, fearing that close interfaces with programs such as Microsoft Internet Explorer might effectively close the market of such software to other companies. Microsoft fought back with a letter to the White House suggesting that twenty-six of its allies say that a delay in the release of the new O/S could damage the U.S. economy. Ultimately, the controversy will only serve to publicize the system’s release. In one year, an updated version of the OS, called Windows 98 Second Edition will be released. Code-name: Memphis

Daniel Chan of Australia is recognized as the official first purchaser of the Windows ’98 operating system and to mark the occasion, he receives a package personally autographed by Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft.

1999
The Atari Historical Society is republished on the Internet. Webmaster Curt Vendel lost the files when hackers erased the site. Originally, he had declared that he would abandon his hobby as a webmaster and collector of rare Atari prototypes, but he was encouraged by an unexpected volume of messages from fans and colleagues asking him to reconsider. With the assistance of his Internet Service Provider (ISP), Vendel was able to restore much of his site from back-up tapes. Visit the official Atari Historical Society website.

2000
The Brazillian website of Strazzeri E Santos Informatica Ltda. is hacked by “seguranca2k”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

The Brazillian website of Allfarma Comercial Ltda. is hacked by the hacker group “Crime Boys”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

The Brazillian website of Farmacia Erva Doce Ltda. is hacked by the hacker group “Crime Boys”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

The Brazillian website of MedSat – Medigues por Satilites Ltda. is hacked by the hacker group “Crime Boys”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

The Brazillian website of Serra OnLine Informatica Ltda. is hacked by “X-Gh0sT”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

The Brazillian website of Web Carnaval is hacked by the hacker group “Crime Boys”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

2001
America Online, Inc. (AOL) announces that their membership has surpassed thirty million subscribers and that AOL 7.0 will be released in the fall of 2001. Visit the official AOL website.

Casio announces the Cassiopeia BE-300 handheld computer, featuring a 166MHz NEC processor, a 320×240 resolution color screen, the Windows CE 3.0 operating system, and a CompactFlash card slot. Price: US$199

Compaq announces that its Alpha processor technology, which was developed by the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) before its merger with Compaq, will be made available to Intel, and that future Compaq servers will be based on the Intel Itanium processor.

Compaq reveals that it has entered into a “technology sharing pact” to build high-end computers with Intel Corporation. The agreement indicates the company’s intention to phase out non-Intel-based computers from their product line.

International Business Machines (IBM) announces that they have developed the world’s fastest silicon transistor. Based on the new technology, computers sold within two years might run as much as five times faster than current models. Visit the official IBM website.

Sony releases the Clie PEG-N610C handheld computer, featuring a 33MHz Motorola Dragonball VZ processor, 8MB RAM, 4MB flash memory, the Palm OS 4.0, and a 16-bit color 320×320 resolution screen. The unit will be available in August. Price: US$400

Sony releases the Clie PEG-S320 handheld computer, featuring a monochrome 160×160 display, a 33MHz Motorola Dragonball VZ processor, 8MB RAM, 4MB flash memory, and the Palm OS 4.0. The unit will be available in August. Price: US$200

2003
Intel releases 2.5 and 2.6GHz Celeron processors, featuring 128KB Level-2 caches and 400MHz system buses. Price: US$89 (2.5 GHz) and US$103 (2.6 GHz) in 1000-unit quantities

Two step-brothers, Joshua and William Buckner, ages 14 and 16, respectively, use a rifle to shoot at vehicles on Interstate 40 in Tennessee, killing a 45-year-old man and a wounding a 19-year-old woman. The two shooters claim to have been inspired by Grand Theft Auto III. The families of the two victims will later file a US$246 million lawsuit against Rockstar Games, Sony Computer Entertainment of America (SCEA), Take-Two Interactive, and Wal-Mart. Read more about the lawsuit at Gamespot.

Yahoo! extends its music service, Launch, into Europe.

2004
Version 0.8 of Camino, the free, open source, GUI-based Web browser based on Mozilla’s Gecko layout engine and designed for the Mac OS X operating system, is released. Visit the software’s official website.

2006
The first high-definition Blue-Ray Disc player from Samsung, the BD-P1000, becomes available from US retail stores. Visit the official Samsung website.

2007
The value of Nintendo stock reaches US$53.06 billion, exceeding the value of Sony. Visit the official Nintendo website.

2008
Take-Two Interactive offers to pay US$30,000 to settle the 2,676 claims filed in the lawsuit over the Hot Coffee incident, along with US$860,000 to a charitable organization. Before the offer can be accepted, however, it must be approved by a federal judge. Read more at the New York Times.