The Great Geek Manual

1783
The first hot-air balloon ascent flies unmanned for ten minutes. It was constructed by the French brothers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier at their home town of Annonay, France.

1833
Ada Byron, who will later become the Countess Lovelace, meets computer pioneer Charles Babbage in England. Byron will later become known for writing a description of Charles Babbage’s early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine.

1924
Ernst Alexanderson transmits the first facsimile message across the Atlantic.

1938
The first machine to produce intelligible speech-like sounds is exhibited by Bell Telephone scientists Homer Dudley, Richard Riesz, and Stanley Watkins. Called “Pedro, the Voder,” it is put on display to the public at the Franklin Institute, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In addition to human voices, it can imitate the sound of various farm animals. It is basically a spectrum-synthesis device operated from a finger keyboard and a foot pedal pitch control. Its operation requires a user to be well trained in the use of the controls.

1939
The film The Wizard of Oz is first screen tested.

1943
The US government commissions the University of Pennsylvania to conduct “research and development of an electronic numerical integrator and computer and delivery of a report thereon” on a six month contract with US$61,700 in funding from US Army Ordnance. The contract is extended nine times by 1946, and by the time the machine is completed, it will cost a total of US$486,804.22. The final product is the ENIAC computer.

1977
The Apple II, the first practical personal computer, goes on sale. The Apple II featured an a 1MHz MOS 6502 processor, an integrated keyboard, a built-in BASIC programming environment, expandable memory (4K expandable to 48K), a monitor capable of color graphics, a sound card, and eight expansion slots. Most importantly, they have a total of eight expansion Slots for adding peripherals and come bundled with the first “killer app” of the business world, the VisiCalc spreadsheet program. The combination popularizes personal computers among business users. Read more an extensive history and description of the Apple II at Apple2History.org.

1978
Taito introduces the classic arcade game, Space Invaders, in Japan. It is among the earliest blockbuster successes in the video games industry, and it will continue to be to influential video games design for years to come.

1983
The Summer Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is held, in Chicago, Illinois, over several days.

At the CES, Coleco Industries announces the Coleco Adam computer, featuring a Zilog Z80A processor, 80kB RAM (64 kB user RAM, 16 kB video RAM), three sound channels, 16-color graphics, a ColecoVision game cartridge slot, 4 MC6801 microprocessors, which control operation of peripherals, SmartWriter word processor in ROM, a full size 75-key keyboard, CP/M compatibility, a version of BASIC compatible with Applesoft BASIC, three expansion slots, Adam net jack, two joysticks with keypads, a 256×192 graphics and 36×24 text on TV display, a 256-512 kB tape-cartridge device, the Buck Rogers: The Planet of Zoom game, and a 10-15 cps 80-column daisy wheel printer. Price: US$599

At the CES, Atari introduces the Atari 600 XL, featuring a 1.79 MHz 6502-C processor, 16kB RAM, 24kB ROM, and a 320×192 graphics and 40×24 text on TV screen. An optional CP/M module is available. An optional package bundle called The Writing System includes AtariWriter word processor on a cartridge and a 20-cps letter-quality printer for US$600. Price: US$199

At the CES, Atari introduces the Atari 800 XL, with 64 kB RAM, the Atari 1450 XL, with built-in 300 bps modem, and the Atari 1450 XLD, with built-in 300 bps modem and disk drive.

1989
UK game developer Bullfrog Productions releases Populous, one of the first commercially successful “god games”, is released for the Amiga, Atari ST, and PC. The game garners great a great deal of popularity for its originality and is often cited as the simulation game from which all others originate.

The Unknown Rebel stands in front of a column of Chinese Type 59 tanks, preventing their advance for over half an hour after the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989. The photos and video, which are circulated globally, become some of the most iconic in history. The most famous photo of the scene (displayed below) is taken by Jeff Widener of the Associated Press, from the sixth floor of the Beijing Hotel, about half a mile (800 m) from the scene, through a 400 mm lens. After blocking the tanks, the man climbs up onto the top of the lead tank and has a conversation with the driver. Reports of what he said to the driver vary, but the most popular versions include, “Why are you here? My city is in chaos because of you.”; “Go back, turn around, and stop killing my people”; and “Go away.” Video footage shows anxious onlookers then pulling the man away and absorbing him into the crowd as the tanks continue on their way.

1994
Mindscape releases the educational geography game Mario Is Missing! for Macs.

Philips Media releases Zelda’s Adventure for personal computers. This is the third game in the row of Philips’ action adventures set in the Zelda universe. In this game, players take the role of princess Zelda herself. The evil Gannon has captured and imprisoned the brave hero Link. In order to save him, Zelda has to venture into Tolemac, an uncharted southeastern region of the land of Hyrule, where she must collect seven celestial signs.

The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Tribunal” first airs. In it, Cardassians arrest Miles O’Brien for collaborating with the Maquis and he’s given a Cardassian trial, where the verdict is already decided, and is always guilty.

1995
Bose-Einstein condensate, a state of matter formed by bosons cooled to temperatures very near to absolute zero, is first created.

C-West releases Pinball Fantasies for the Jaguar game system.

International Business Machines (IBM) offers US$60 per share takeover bid for Lotus Development Corp.

1996
Apple Computer, Inc. announces they will close its printed circuit board assembly plant in Elk Grove, California by year’s end. The plant is just over a year old and cost US$80 million to build.

Direct X 2.0, a collection of application programming interfaces for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms, is released for Windows 95 and NT 4.0.

Peter Crisp, a longtime Apple Computer board member steps down and is replaced by Edgar Woolard, Jr. of E.I. du Pont de Nemourts & Company. It is also revealed that Steve Capps, a key developer of the Macintosh operating system, left the company earlier in the week.

1997
Electronic Arts Inc. agrees to purchase rival game company, Maxis, Inc. Maxis is well-known for their line of SimCity games.

Sony Corporation launches a new television (KV-21SP1) in Japan that is targeted toward owners of the PlayStation game console. The 53,000 yen (US$455) 21-inch television features a direct Red Green Blue (RGB) input and two prominent stereo speakers.

1998
Ian Hetherington, managing director and founder of Psygnosis, resigns from his post. Reportedly, Hetherington and parent company, Sony, have not seen eye to eye since Sony’s acquisition of the company in 1993. Gary Johnson, Chief Operating Officer (COO) will assume leadership of the company.

Industry programming pioneer Jim Nitchals, who was responsible for such classic games as Asteroid Field, Bug Attack, Ring Raiders, and Star Thief for the Apple II computer dies of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 36. In addition to being a giant of the gaming industry, Nitchals was also a hero of the anti-spam movement.

Reuters, the Associated Press, and other news services relate the news that comedian Bob Hope has passed away over the Internet. The information turns out to be untrue.

The US Depart of Commerce (DoC) releases the Green Paper outlining its plan to privatize the Domain name system (DNS) on January 30th. This is followed up by a White Paper.

2000
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) begins shipping 600 to 700MHz Duron processors to computer manufacturers. Price: Starting at US$112

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) introduces 750MHz to 1GHz Athlon processors. The processors include an integrated 256kB Level 2 on-chip, full-speed exclusive cache. Code-name: Thunderbird Price: US$319 to US$990

Computex Taipei, also known as the Taipei International Computer Show, is held In Taipei, Taiwan, over five days.

The Magic: The Gathering expansion set Prophecy is released. The main theme and mechanic of the set is lands, specifically, whether lands are untapped or not. The set includes 143 cards: 55 common, 44 uncommon, and 44 rare.

2001
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) announces two new Athlon microprocessors, the Athlon MP, which runs at 1GHz and 1.2 GHz, as well as the AMD-760 MP.

DVD International announces the availability of two new NUON compatible games, Space Invaders XL and Iron Soldier 3.

Fastest Game News Online reports that Mad Catz, Inc. has built a prototype called Bioforce for the PlayStation 2 that actually sends an electrical shock to the player’s hands as they play game software authored for it.

The Omron Corporation announces that it has developed a microprocessor for cellular telephones that is ten times faster than existing processors.

Nevada becomes the first US state to vote to legalize online gambling.

Reuters news service reports that a research firm, Jupiter Media Metrix, has released a report indicating that the combined companies of AOL Time Warner, Microsoft Corporation, Napster, and Yahoo, Inc. control just over half of all time spent online by United States computer users.

Simplex Solutions, Inc. and Toshiba Corporation jointly announce that they have developed a new method to develop microchips so that they yield up to ten percent greater performance or better. The method involves laying out the transistors in diagonal patterns to reduce the distances between them. Toshiba plans to use software created by Simplex to make chips by the second half of 2002.

Sega Corporation and Sony Corporation jointly announce plans to enable users of the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 game consoles to play games while linked together through the Internet.

2002
After a lengthy public beta, Mozilla 1.0, Mozilla’s first public release, is made available. Mozilla is a browser that worked on multiple operating systems, including Linux, Mac OS, Microsoft Windows, and Solaris. The name Mozilla is a contraction of “Mosaic killer” (using the slang “killa” for killer, Moz+illa), a phrase that refers to the hope that the project will oust Mosaic as the web’s most popular web browser, and alluding to the the classic movie monster Godzilla.

2003
Bethesda Softworks releases The Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal for Windows in Poland. It was also released in North America on November 6, 2002. Tribunal is the first expansion for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Instead of directly modifying the original game world, the expansion creates the city of Mournhold, which is only accessible by teleportation. While the city of Mournhold appears to be similar to the open-air towns of the original game, it more closely follows the rules of an interior room.

2005
George Lucas is named the one hundredth “Greatest American” by the Discovery Channel.

2006
GNU Bison 2.3, a free parser generator computer program written for the GNU project, is released. Visit the official Bison webpage at the GNU Project.

NeoOffice 2.0 Alpha Intel, a version of the open source OpenOffice.org office suite that has been ported to Mac OS X, is released.

Nintendo releases the puzzle game Big Brain Academy for the Nintendo DS in the US.

The Pirate Bay (TPB) goes down, citing database server problems that are the result of all the publicity resulting from the May 31, 2006 police raid against them. The site will be back up the next day with limited availability and fully operational within several days.

Red Hat acquired the open source middleware provider JBoss, a Java EE-based application server, and JBoss becomes a division of Red Hat.