The Great Geek Manual

1885
The first commercial motion-picture film is manufactured by the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company in Rochester, New York. It is the first film produced in continuous strips on reels.

1895
The Phantoscope, an early motion picture projector that enlarges film images for group exhibitions, is patented by Charles Francis Jenkins. (US No. 536,569) It will first be demonstrated at the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia in October. Armat will later sell the rights to his invention to Thomas Edison, and Edison use the device as the basis of the Vitascope projector.

1923
The BBC introduces a daily weather forecast. Visit the official BBC website.

1936
The first two hundred inch diameter, reflecting mirror used in the construction of the Hale telescope is shipped from Corning, New York, to Mt. Palomar Observatory in California. The lens alone weighs twenty tons.

1958
The United States Army launches Explorer III satellite.

1969
The Soviet weather satellite Meteor 1 is launched.

1975
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) introduces new versions of the IBM System/370 Models 158 and 168. Visit the official IBM website.

1976
The First Annual World Altair Computer Convention is held at the Airport Marina Hotel near Albuquerque, New Mexico, over three days. It is the first such convention for the microcomputer industry. Bill Gates will explain his position on software piracy in his opening address on March 27. Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), the developer of the Altair 8800, was established in the southwestern city to develop its kit computer, which became a runaway hit among hobbyists after it was featured by Popular Mechanic magazine. In the hotel’s penthouse suite, the Processor Technology Corporation holds establishes a “booth” to promote their 4KB memory boards for the Altair.

1980
The European Space Agency (ESA) creates the French company Arianespace, the world’s first commercial space transportation company. Visit the official Arianespace website.

1981
The French newspaper La Parisien Libere, one of the largest and most influential in France, publishes its first online edition on Teletel, videotex network.

1987
NASA launches the Fltsatcom-6 communications satellite for the US Navy, but it fails to reach orbit when lightning strikes and destroys the rocket.

1990
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Allegiance” first airs. (No. 318) In it, following a bout of strange behavior, the crew discovers that Picard has been replaced by an alien doppleganger. Memory Alpha entry

1994
A photo of the first moon discovered in orbit around an asteroid is released. The potato-shaped asteroid Ida and its newly-discovered moon, Dactyl, were imaged by the NASA Galileo spacecraft, about fourteen minutes before its closest approach to the asteroid on August 28, 1993. Ida is approximately thirty-six miles long and fourteen miles wide, and it is pocked with craters. Dactyl is about one mile (1.5km) wide. The moon is named for the Dactyli, a group of mythological beings who lived on Mount Ida, where they hid and protected Zeus as an infant.

1995
The Spring European Computer Trade Show (ECTS) is held March 26 through March 28 at the Grand Hall in Olympia, London. During the event, Electronic Arts (EA) is voted Software Publisher of the Year by an international panel of game reviewers. The event is attended by 8,498 people.

1997
Twenty-one women and eighteen men are found dead in a mass suicide in a mansion in Rancho Sante Fe, California, which had been rented by a cult that operates a teams of programmers who earn money designing websites including one called “Higher Source.” The Heavensgate.com site produced by the team describes the recent passing of the Hale-Bopp Comet as a sign that aliens are approaching the Earth with the intention of taking those prepared to leave their bodies with them.

1999
The CERT Coordination Center receives initial reports of a fast-spreading new Microsoft Word macro virus known as “Melissa“. Once loaded, the worm uses its victim’s MAPI-standard email address book, mostly Microsoft Outlook, in order to send copies of itself to the first fifty people in the address book. The virus attaches an infected document to each of its email message with the subject line, “Important Message From ,” with the being that pre-set in the victim’s computer. The body of the message reads, “Here is that document you asked for … don’t show anyone else ;-)” and includes an infected Microsoft Word file named “List.DOC” as an attachment, which contains a passwords for eighty pornography websites. While “Melissa” was not, according to its creator, intended to be malicious, it will eventually infect between a hundred thousand and a quarter of a million computers globally in the course of three days, causing an estimated eighty million dollars in damage as it crashes servers by flooding them with email. It is the first virus capable of jumping from computer to computer entirely unassisted. The virus was written by David L. Smith, a twenty-nine year old New Jersey computer programmer, who named the virus after a lap dancer he met in Florida. Smith, who will be considered to be one of the first people ever prosecuted for spreading a computer virus, will later be sentenced to twenty months in jail and a fine of five thousand dollars. “Melissa” will also be knowns as, “Kwyjibo”, “Kwejeebo”, “Mailissa”, and “Simpsons”. Read the F-Secure profile of the Melissa virus.

Renown hacker Kevin Mitnick, age 35, pleads guilty to computer and wire fraud charges. Partially disclosed terms of the plea agreement include provisions that Mitnick must not touch a computer for four years nor may he profit from the sale of his story. For more information on Kevin Mitnick, visit The Free Information Society.

2001
At the Microsoft Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, in Anaheim, California, Bill Gates introduces the Tablet PC initiative, featuring a Transmeta Crusoe processor, a touch-screen interface, MS Notebook handwriting recognition software, and the Windows XP operating system. Price: US$2,000-3,500 Size: 8.5 x 11 inches, one inch thick Weight: Under 3 pounds

Caldera Systems announces it will change its name to Caldera International when it has completed the acquisition of the Unix products and services of the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO).

LSI Logic Corporation announces its intentions to acquire C-Cube Microsystems, a pioneer in video compression and MPEG digital video standards, for US$878 million in stock.

2002
Ballantine Books releases the fantasy novel by Laurell K. Hamilton as a hardcover. (ISBN 0-345-43527-3) It is the second novel in the Merry Gentry series. Visit the author’s official website. Length: 336 pages

2004
Version 4.3.5 of the PHP programming language is released. Visit the official PHP website.

2005
The BBC relaunches the long-running science fiction television series Doctor Who with the episode “Rose” after a fifteen year, three month hiatus. (No. 161) The series picks up with the Ninth Doctor, played by Christopher Eccleston. Despite maintaining the continuity and conventions of the first twenty-six seasons of the series, producers chose to begin number the new episodes from scratch. Read more about the history of the Dr. Who series at the BBC. Visit the official Dr. Who website.

In the quarter ending on this day, Apple Computer will later report earning US$290 million, or approximately 34¢ a share, on revenue of US$3.24 billion. In the same quarter of the previous year, the company only earned US$46 million, or approximately 6¢ a share, on revenue of US$1.91 billion. The company attributes the stagger gains to iPod sales. Visit the official website of Apple Computer.