The Great Geek Manual

1908
Gabriel Lippman introduces the new three-dimensional color photography to the Academy of Sciences.

1933
RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. releases the great-granddaddy of all monster movies, King Kong, directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack and starring Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, and Bruce Cabot, premieres in New York City. The film was produced on a budget of US$650,000. Visit the film’s official website. IMDB listing Running Time: 1 hr 44 mins

1948
William “Willy” A. Higinbotham is issued a patent for an “An Electronic Circuit for Differentiating Voltage Waveforms.” (US No. 2,436,891) The invention was originally built in 1942 for a radar bombsight, but the circuit will eventually come to be used in all analog computers.

1959
An experimental push-button phone is tested by the Southern New England Telephone Company in New Haven, Connecticut to see if customers dial fewer wrong numbers using buttons rather than a dial.

1967
The Star Trek episode “This Side of Paradise” first airs. (No. 24) In it, the Enterprise visits a planet where mysterious plants regulate the population. Spock is entranced by the planet and becomes loath to leave. Memory Alpha entry

1969
The Concorde supersonic transport (SST) jet makes its maiden flight. The Concode is only the second supersonic passenger airliner to have been commercially operated, the first being the Tupolev Tu-144, which took its initial flight on December 31, 1968. The Concorde line will be retired on November 26, 2000, following its only crash on July 25, 2000.

1972
NASA launches the Pioneer 10 spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, Florida on a mission to explore the outer planets of the solar system. It will pass near Jupiter and Neptune before leaving the solar system. Visit the Pioneer Project website.

1983
According to Twin Galaxies, Robert Purser scores a record-setting 974,475 points playing Sega’s Star Trek at Player’s arcade in Norcross, Georgia. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

1985
The video game developer Game Arts is founded in Tokyo, Japan. Visit the official Game Arts website.

1987
According to the Monday, March 2 issue of Computer & Software News, twenty-nine percent of home computer users own a modem. Alternatively, seventy-five percent own a monitor, seventy percent own a printer, and seventy-one percent own a disk drive.

Apple Computer introduces the expandable Macintosh SE, featuring an 8MHz Motorola 68000 processor, and 1MB of RAM. Price: US$2,900 (dual floppy drive system) or US$3,700 (one floppy drive and one 20MB hard drive)

Apple Computer introduces the open architecture Macintosh II, the first for Apple with color graphics. The system features a 16MHz Motorola 68020 processor, and 1MB of RAM. A basic system with one 800Kb 3.5-inch floppy drive and no monitor sells for US$3,898. A system with 1MB RAM, one floppy drive, a 40MB hard drive, and a color monitor is priced at US$7,000. The system features a plug-and-play “NuBus” architecture for expansion cards.

1990
Steve Jackson tries to get copies of his seized files back from the Secret Service. He is treated poorly and given only a handful of files from one office computer. He is not allowed to touch the computer, which hosted the Illuminati bulletin board system (BBS), or copy any of its files. Jackson’s company, Steve Jackson Games will suffers severely, as its newest publication and all of its business documents are contained on the computers. Eight employees will loose their jobs because of the March first Secret Service raid, and the company will also loose thousands of dollars in sales. To read more about the raid, see March 1.

1992
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Ethics” first airs. (No. 516) In it, Worf is paralyzed in an accident, and a visiting doctor renowned for her cutting edge research offers Worf a medical alternative to long-term therapy. Memory Alpha entry

1994
Version 0.99.15j of the Linux operating system is released.

1995
Delphi, an object oriented derivative of the Pascal programming language developed by Borland, is released. Learn more about Pascal.

Yahoo! is incorporated. Visit the Yahoo! Media Relations site for an extensive timeline of Yahoo’s key milestones or an official history of how Yahoo got started.

Version 1.1.95 of the Linux operating system is released.

1997
US Senator Orrin Hatch holds a hearing on Microsoft’s alleged antitrust activities, questioning Bill Gates, Scott NcNealy of Sun Microsystems, and Jim Barksdale of Netscape Communications. Bill Gates admits Microsoft’s contracts bar Internet content providers from promoting Netscape’s browser.

1998
Apple Computer announces price reductions on its Power Macintosh G3 line of home and office computers. The 233MHz Power PC G3 RISC processor model with 32MB of memory and a 4GB hard drive will now sell for US$1,699, reduced US$300. The 266MHz Power PC G3 RISC processor model with 128MB of memory and a 4GB hard drive now sells for US$3,799, after a reduction of US$400. Visit the official website of Apple Computer.

Data sent from the Galileo space probe indicates that Jupiter’s moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.

A hacker causes the crash of thousands of university and government computers. The attack affects nine of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) ten major field offices as well as an undetermined number of universities, including the Massachusetts of Technology (MIT) and the University of California, Berkeley. Although the hacker is not traced, experts note that the attacks exploit a programming flaw in Windows ‘95 and Windows NT operating systems.

Wizards of the Coast releases the Magic: The Gathering set Stronghold. It it the twenty-first set released in all, the thirteenth expert level set, and the second set in the Rath Block. The set contains 143 cards, including: 55 common cards, 44 uncommon cards, and 44 rare cards. Visit the set’s official website.

1999
Del Rey releases the fantasy novel Dragonshadow by Barbara Hambly as a hardcover. (ISBN-10: 0345421876) It’s the second book in the Winterlands series. Visit the author’s official website. Length: 297 pages

The Hewlett-Packard Company announces plans to split into two companies following the approval of the plan at a special board meeting. One of the two companies will retain the Hewlett-Packard name and focus on the computing business. The other company will essentially be a entirely new entity, formed to focus on the measurement equipment which comprised approximately US$7.6 billion of Hewlett-Packard’s US$47.1 billion total revenue in 1998.

Nintendo announces plans to determine the plausibility of installing Game Boy consoles on the vertical handrails of the Underground Jubilee line in London.

In Tokyo, Japan, Sony unveils the specifications for the next PlayStation video game system to fifteen invited guests. The new system will feature a 300MHz 128-bit “Emotion Engine” processor co-developed by Toshiba and Sony CEI, a 150MHz Graphics Synthesizer processor, 32MB main RAM, 3.2GBps memory bus, a floating-point performance of 6.2 GFLOPS, 33.8 or 37.5MHz core PlayStation CPU, CD-ROM or DVD-ROM game media with capacities up to 4.7GB, and IEEE 1394, USB, and PC Card interfaces.

2000
Bahram Saghari is found guilty of computer tampering and trying to extort fifty thousand dollars from TV Interactive, Inc., her previous employer. The verdict is determined after a six week trial. Judge Jean High Wetenkamp orders Saghari into custody until his sentencing on Saturday, April 29. Saghari deliberately deleted software from his employer’s computers, before demanding US$50,000 to restore it.

Reuters news service reports that the personal data of two hundred sixty-six PlayStation 2 customers was leaked on a Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) website when forty-four customers typed in other customer’s order numbers. Sony is quick to offers assurances that the data didn’t include either credit card or telephone numbers.

Tor Books publishes the science fiction novel Jumping Off The Planet by David Gerrold as a hardcover. (ISBN-10: 0312890699) It is the first book in the Starsiders Trilogy. Length: 288 pages

Version 2.60 gamma 2 of the RemoteAccess Bulletin Board System (BBS) is released.

2001
Napster pledges to begin blocking access to over one million copyrighted MP3 format music files, pursuant to a new injunction being drafted by Judge Marilyn Hall Patel. The pledge inspires a new frenzy by Napster’s users to download the files before the injunction takes affect. Napster lawyers offer to install software over the weekend to stop the trade of copyrighted songs, but the measure has little effect.

The United States Navy reveals that a computer hacker has obtained unclassified system codes for guiding ships, rockets, and satellites from one of its computers.

Version 2.0 of the iMesh file sharing and online social network. Visit the official iMesh website.

2004
At a press conference, NASA scientists announce their conclusion that the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity had set down on the surface of Mars in an area where “liquid water once drenched the surface.”

2005
The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) adds the “E10+” rating to its range of ratings. The rating was created in order to subdivide the E (”Everyone”) rating into two separate ratings, one for younger children and one for older children. Visit the official ESRB website.

Queen Elizabeth II bestows the title of Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire to Microsoft founder Bill Gates for his contribution to commerce across the United Kingdom and his efforts in addressing the issue of poverty around the globe. The honor entitles him to append the letters “KBE” to his name but not use the title “Sir.”

2006
EA Games releases the real-time strategy (RTS) game The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II and The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II Collector’s Edition for Windows. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: T (Teen)

Nintendo released the Nintendo DS Lite, a redesign of the Nintendo DS, in Japan. The unit’s suggested retail price was ¥16,800, but due to excessive initial demand, many retailers raised the price to ¥23,300.

2008
Intel announces the new Atom brand processors, a family of low-power processor chips for portable devices in which energy efficiency is a chief priority. The release marks the beginning of Intel’s entry into the netbook market.