The Great Geek Manual

1590
Tycho Brahe discovers a comet in the constellation Pisces.

1616
Copernican theory is declared “false and erroneous” in a decree written by Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, and issued by the Catholic Church in Rome. Further, no person was to be permitted to hold or teach the theory that the earth revolves around the sun. When Galileo subsequently violated the decree, he was put on trial and held under house arrest for the final eight years of his life.

1868
C.H. Gould of Birmingham, England, receives a patent for the first stapling device.

1904
Nikola Tesla, in Electrical World and Engineer, describes the process of ball lightning formation. Read more about Tesla’s theories on ball lightning at Bibliotecapleyades.

1924
The Computing Tabulating Recording Company (CTR) changes its name to International Business Machines (IBM).

1956
The film King Kong is run on television for the first time.

1958
Explorer 2 spacecraft launches, fails to reach Earth orbit.

1968
The United States launches Solar Explorer B, also known as Explorer 37, from Wallops Island to study the Sun.

1970
A nuclear non-proliferation treaty goes into effect after ratification by forty-three nations.

1975
The Homebrew Computer Club first meets in a garage in Menlo Park, California. Founders Fred Moore and Gordon French play host to thirty-two microcomputer hobbyists, who spend the first meeting discussing the MITS Altair 8800, a computer that can be assembled at home from a kit. Several very high-profile hackers and IT entrepreneurs will later emerge from the ranks of the Homebrew Computer Club members, including the founders of Apple Computer. The club and others like it will play a large part in building the popularity of the personal computer. Read a summation of the first meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club. Read more about the Homebrew Computer Club at The Startup Gallery.

1978
Landsat 3 is launched from Vandenberg AirForce Base in California.

1979
Detection equipment picks up a gamma ray burst originating from the Large Magellanic Cloud, leading to the discovery of soft gamma repeaters.

Principal photography begins on the film Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.

Voyager 1 makes its closest approach to Jupiter, just 172,000 miles.

1980
Earth satellites record gamma rays from remnants of supernova N-49.

1982
Venera 14, a Soviet satellite, lands on the planet Venus.

1983
The Journey into Imagination attraction opens in the Journey into Imagination pavilion in EPCOT Center at Walt Disney World.

According to Twin Galaxies, Eric Ginner scores a record-setting 1,720,392 points playing the Atari arcade game Millipede at Golfland USA in Sunnyvale, California. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

According to Twin Galaxies, Jerry Madsen scores a record-setting 7,253,150 points playing the Williams Electronics arcade game Joust at the Star Ship Video arcade in Upland, California. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

1984
The Intelsat V-F8 satellite is launched by an Ariane rocket.

1986
United States Navy divers find the largely intact but heavily-damaged crew compartment of the Space Shuttle Challenger. The bodies of all seven astronauts killed in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster were still inside.

1991
Microbiologist Lonnie. O. Ingram of the University of Florida is issued a patent for a process which turns garbage into fuel. (US No. 5,000,000) His method depends on the creation of a new species of bacterium genetically formed from two other bacteria.

1993
In an early demonstration of the impact computers can have on people’s lives, the Los Angeles Times reports that a blind student is taking advantage of a talking laptop computer to help him complete the courses necessary to graduate from UCLA. After fifteen years of going to college on and off, the computer provides Robert Antunez with the independence he needed to complete a bachelor’s degree in political science.

1994
Arizona lawyers Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel spam six thousand usenet newsgroups with postings advertising green card lottery services. Many Internet users subsequently fight back. The incident is the first instance of spam.

1995
The Free Internet Chess Server is brought online and remains operational today. Play chess on the web for free at the official Free Internet Chess Server.

The Yahoo! search engine is introduced to the internet, following the company’s March 1st incorporation. The Yahoo! domain was created on January 18, 1995, and on April 12, 1996, Yahoo! will hold its initial public offering.

1996
WMS Industries, Inc., makers of Bally, Midway, and Williams coin-op games, announces an agreement to acquire Atari Games from Time Warner. Doing business as Time Warner Interactive, Atari Games is the coin-op arcade half of Atari which split as an independent operation when the Tramiel family acquired the home systems division in 1986. Although WMS refutes it, the rumored price for the acquisition is US$25 million. In a report published three days prior in the San Jose Mercury News, WMS won the bid to acquire Atari Games over Nolan Bushnell who was the original founder of Atari.

1997
Acclaim Entertainment, Inc. announces completion of their restructuring of domestic bank credit as well as full repayment of a loan from Midland Bank.

Apple Computer promises their employees and the public that a formal restructuring plan will be revealed Friday, March 14. Industry experts predict the new plans will include between two and five thousand jobs cuts from Apple’s eleven thousand person worldwide workforce.

JTS announces record shipments of their own branded disk drives, revenue increases of 560% to $119.5 million, and a US$150 million loss for the second two quarters of their 1997 fiscal year. About $110 million of that figure is attributed to “in-process research and development” resulting from their merger with Atari Corporation.

Masanori Uekihara is arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) at the San Francisco International Airport after arriving from Japan. Masanori is accused of obtaining product secrets, including documents and computer chips, from Maxim Integrated Products in the Silicon Valley by posing as a potential customer, while actually working for the company’s competitor, Linear Technology.

The home page of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is hacked and defaced. The site is totally unresponsive to new users for about a day, making it difficult to even get to the real home page. The message left on the site by the hackers reads, in part, “Gr33t1ngs fr0m th3 m3mb3rs 0f H4G1S. Our mission is to continue where our colleagues the ILF left off. During the next month, we the members of H4G1S, will be launching an attack on corporate America. All who profit from the misuse of the internet will fall victim to our upcoming reign of digital terrorism. Our privileged and highly skilled members will stop at nothing until our presence is felt nationwide. Even your most sophisticated firewalls are useless. We will demonstrate this in the upcoming weeks.” The message remains on the site for half an hour. It is the first time hackers have ever broken into the NASA server, which is located at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. NASA officials say they would move the public Web page, at www.nasa.gov, to a new server in an announcement on March 6. To see the defaced website, visit the website of 2600 magazine.

1998
NASA announces that the Clementine probe orbiting the Moon has found enough water to support a human colony.

The website of Nambla.org is hacked by “74074!”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

1999
A-ONE Online (Atari Online News, Etc.) Magazine, featuring Atari news, issues their premiere edition. www.ICWhen.com is designated as an official distribution point for Dana Jacobson’s new publication. Read A-ONE Magazine at its current location.

The announcement finally comes on the Robot Wars Forum that the end of the court case (Profile v Thorpe) regarding the sale of the Robot Wars trademark. Profile has won the rights to Robot Wars. Gary Pini’s letter mentions that Marc Thorpe will still be involved in Robot Wars in some ways, but doesn’t elaborate.

Bernie Stolar of Sega of America reads a formal statement in response to Sony’s recent PlayStation 2 announcements. The statement is plyed in a live phone-based conference to people calling (800) 475-0457 and using “SONIC” as a password. Stolar suggests that Sony will have a “challenge” to live up to their own declared specifications. He states that Sega’s Dreamcast “will evolve” and is a product that is “alive”. He says that Dreamcast will “adapt to the user”. Additionally, he suggests that Sony is targeting an “older demographic”.

Don LaVigne, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Free-PC, Inc. issues an e-mail to everyone who has registered on their site for a free Personal Computer (PC). LaVigne claims that almost one million applications have been submitted within the first week of their offer to provide up to ten thousand computers in exchange for the users having to see advertisements provided by Free-PC, Inc. while surfing the Internet. The message thanks users for their patience as they take the time to eliminate duplicates and determine which applicants will qualify for the free PC offer.

2002
Handspring resumes selling the Visor Platinum handheld computer. Price: US$169

2008
The Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California Annenberg School releases a study revealing that, if forced to give up a technology, 58 percent of Americans would consider their cell phone to be more important than either the Internet or television. Previously, the annual study had revealed that most Americans would have place more importance on the internet that any other form of electronic communication.

Samsung Electronics becomes the first manufacturer to ship a 500 GB 2.5-inch hard drive. Hitachi was the first company to announce the development of a 500 GB 2.5-inch hard drive, before 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show. Samsung was the second to make the announce. Visit the official Samsung website.