The Great Geek Manual

1718
The “Defence” rapid-fire gun, the world’s first machine gun, is patented by a London lawyer, James Puckle. (UK No. 418) The design is a flintlock revolver with a barrel 3 feet long and a bore of 1.25 inches. A pre-loaded “cylinder” held eleven charges and could fire sixty-three shots in seven minutes. It’s firing rate of nine shots per minute is three times faster than the fastest loading time of an infantryman. The patent describes it as “A portable gun or machine called a Defence, that discharges so often and so many bullets, and can be so quickly loaded as renders it next to impossible to carry any ship by boarding,” indicating that the weapon was initially designed for shipboard use. Puckle will begin to manufacture the guns at the White Cross Alley factory in 1721.

1928
The animated short “Plane Crazy“, featuring the first appearance of Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse, is released. The cartoon was co-directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. Iwerks is also the main animator for this short, and reportedly spent six weeks working on it.

1935
At the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Albert Einstein is awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal for his outstanding fundamental contributions to theoretical physics, especially his relativity theory. According to Time magazine, “A throng of scientists and dignitaries was assembled to hear what the medalist had to say. Einstein genially informed the chairman that he had nothing to say, that inspiration which he had awaited until the last moment had failed him. The chairman, much more embarrassed than the medalist, conveyed this information to the audience.” In atonement, Einstein wrote a 44-page essay entitled “Physics and Reality,” published in the March 1936 issue of the Journal of the Franklin Institute.

1937
RCA demonstrates projection television, with images enlarged to 8 feet by 10 feet, at Institute of Radio Engineers convention.

1940
McDonald’s, which will grow into the world’s largest chain of fast-food restaurants, is founded when brothers Dick and Mac McDonald on Route 66 in San Bernardino, California. Its menu consists of twenty-five items, mostly barbecue. As is common at the time, they employ around twenty-five carhops. It becomes a popular and highly profitable teen hangout.

1953
Stanley L. Miller publishes his paper on the synthesis of amino acids under conditions that simulate primordial Earth’s atmosphere in the journal Science. Miller had applied an electric discharge to a mixture of CH4, NH3, H2O, and H2, which is believed to be the atmospheric composition of early Earth. Instead of producing a random mixture of organic molecules, the surprising result is a mixture of amino acids, hydroxy acids, and urea. These compounds are so significant in the biochemistry of life, that this discovery marks the beginning of the search to understand the origin of life on Earth. Miller’s paper comes only a few weeks after Watson and Crick reported their DNA double-helix model was published in the magazine Nature.

1957
Great Britain tests its first hydrogen bomb in the air off Christmas Island in the central Pacific Ocean in Operation Grapple. In doing so, Britain becomes the third nation, after the United States and the Soviet Union, with thermonuclear capabilities. The bomb is dropped by a four-engined jet, Valiant of Number 49 Squadron Royal Air Force (RAF) Bomber Command, normally based at RAF Wittering, Northants.

1958
The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 3.

1959
An intelligible voice message is bounced off the moon from Jodrell Bank in the United Kingdom to the Cambridge Research Centre in Massachusetts, US.

1960
The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 4.

1963
NASA astronaut L. Gordon Cooper blasts off aboard Faith 7 on the final mission of the Project Mercury space program. Cooper becomes the first American to spend more than a day in space. During the mission, NBC broadcasts the first television pictures ever transmitted by a manned US space capsule, but because the picture quality is poor, only NBC is the only network to carry the transmission, and on a tape-delay, not live.

1974
The first UNIX Users Meeting organized by Lou Katz, Columbia University.

1982
According to Twin Galaxies, Kenneth Vance, age 18, scores a record-setting 397,460 points playing the Atari game Space Duel for one hour and seven minutes at the Tilt Arcade in Las Vegas, Nevada. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

Texas Instruments (TI) initiates a promotion to offer a free TexNet subscription to purchasers of a modem, RS232, and Terminal Emulator II cartridge for the TI-99/4a home computer between May 15 and Saturday, October 16.

Infocom releases Zork I Release 25.

1983
After dropping a US$100 rebate program due to a permanent price reduction to US$149.95, Texas Instruments (TI) initiates a new US$50 rebate program for the TI-99/4a home computer and drops plans to produce the TI-99/2 Basic Computer.

1984
In Beijing, China, William Millard of Computerland and officials of the government sign a letter of intent to create a network for microcomputer systems in China.

1985
The last Lisa/Mac XL is produced at a Carrollton, Texas factory. Sun Remarketing buys thousands of the last Lisas, and is able to sell most of them after upgrading them with more current Macintosh technology.

Sun Microsystems releases version 2.0 of its SunOS Unix operating system.

1987
Journalist Paul Freiberger publishes an article in The San Francisco Examiner on page C-1, entitled, “Atari getting set to wage war on U.S. PC market.”

Nintendo releases Super Mario Brothers for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in Europe.

The Soviet Union launches the Polyus prototype orbital weapons platform, but it fails to reach orbit.

1989
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Samaritan Snare” first airs. (No. 243) In the episode, A group of dimwitted aliens, the Pakleds, kidnap Geordi to fix their malfunctioning ship. Memory Alpha entry

1993
A woman in Paris is surgically given two new lungs, both of which are cut from the single lung of a large man. Only previously attempted in animal trials, this is the first human to receive such surgery. The procedure is of particular interest to children, for whom finding donor lungs of the correct size is often a problem.

1994
The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Crossover” first airs. (No. 223) In the episode, Major Kira and Dr. Bashir are thrown into an alternate universe where Bajor is a tyrannical power, and need to return to their Deep Space Nine. Memory Alpha entry

1995
The Star Trek: Voyager episode “Jetrel” first airs. (No. 115) In the episode, a member of the Haakonians, a race warring with the Talaxians, arrives on Voyager, much to the dismay of Neelix, whose family was killed by them. Memory Alpha entry

1996
The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) opens in Los Angeles, California. Atari Corporation is conspicuously absent from the show. Bandai Digital Entertainment announces the Pippin @World computer. The device includes a keyboard and CD-ROM player. It can be hooked up to a television and connected to the Internet. Bandai expects to ship the device in September, priced at US$599. Nintendo gives a preview of the Nintendo 64 game system, with the Super Mario 64 game.

1997
ABCNEWS.com, produced by the Starwave Corporation, is launched. Starwave was a Seattle-based software company, funded by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. The company is responsible for a number of groundbreaking websites during the Internet explosion of the late nineties.

Exponential Technologies ceases development of PowerPC processors.

Hackers floods NASA transmissions to the Space Shuttle Atlantis, interfering with official communications.

Microsoft releases the Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 3. Windows NT 4.0 is the fourth release of Microsoft’s Windows NT line of operating systems, released on July 29, 1996. It is a 32-bit Windows system available in both workstation and server editions with a graphical environment similar to that of Windows 95.

1999
Controversy erupts when a list of MI6 agents is released on a UK website. Though forced to remove the list from the site, the damage is done. The list has already been mirrored on websites across the web.

Netscape Communications releases version 4.6 of the Netscape Communicator web browser. The new version includes the RealNetworks G2 multimedia player and 56-bit DES encryption.

2000
America Online, Inc. (AOL) settles charges that it improperly accounted for specific advertising costs by agreeing to pay $3.5 million. Allegedly, the company deferred advertising expenses that should have been recorded immediately as current costs. The deferral enabled the company to present higher profits to its shareholders according to charges filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference is held in San Jose, California. At the event, Apple Computer releases Mac OS X DR 4 (fourth developer release) to 4,000 software developers.

The Love Bug worm is first distributed into the wild from the AMA Computer College in the Philippines.

Version 2.61 of the RemoteAccess Bulletin Board System (BBS) is released.

2001
Apple Computer unveils plans to open twenty-five retail stores in the United States by the end of the year. Steve Jobs leads a group of journalists from a hotel in Tysons Corner, Virginia to Apple’s first store in the second level of Tysons Corner Center to make the announcement at a commemorative press event. The store, along with a second location in Washington, D.C. will open on Saturday, May 19. Visit the official Apple Store website.

Hackers attack the University of Washington computer network and put install filesharing software on its computers.

Massachusetts-based, Analog Devices, Inc., reveals that they have produced the world’s first silicon chip that supports JPEG2000 image compression technology. The new chips enable digital camera owners to adjust the quality of their photos so they can expand available memory or increase the speed of Internet connections. The ADV-JP2000 co-processors will be made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) and AOL Time Warner, Inc. jointly announce a business partnership under which users would be able to PlayStation 2 users access the Internet.

Xdrive Technologies, Inc. stops providing free Internet storage space that users can access from home or office without any forewarning. Thursday, May 24, the company will send their former users emails offering them comparable paid subscription services in the future.

2002
Intel releases the 1.4 GHz Celeron processor, featuring a 100 MHz bus and 256KB cache. Price: US$89 in 1000-unit quantities

Intel releases the 1.7GHz Celeron processor, featuring 8KB Level-1 data cache, 12 kB Level 1 instruction cache, 128 kB Level 2 cache, 400MHz system bus, MMX, SSE, SSE2 instructions, 64GB address space, and two pipelined FPUs. The processor incorporates 42 million transistors in a 0.18-micron process. Code-name: Willamette Price: US$83 in 1000-unit quantities

Microsoft reduces the price of the Xbox video game system to US$199 in the US, CDN$299 in Canada, and ¥24,800 in Japan (about US$195).

Netscape Communications Corporation releases version 6.2.3 of the Netscape browser. Visit the official Netscape website.

The Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Two Days and Two Nights” first airs. (No. 125) In the episode, the Enterprise arrives for shore leave on Risa. While there, Archer encounters a woman who knows more about the Suliban than she’s willing to admit. Memory Alpha entry

2003
An article in the journal Nature reports that all species of large fish in the world’s oceans have been so thoroughly overfished that just ten percent of the population that existed in 1950 remains. The scientists who authored the report conclude that the world’s oceans are no longer even close to their natural state. Sharks, Atlantic cod, and Pacific sardines are noted as particularly in danger of extinction. The scientists recommend drastic measures to reduce ocean fishing.

Warner Bros. releases the science fiction film Matrix Reloaded, directed by The Wachowski Brothers and starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Hugo Weaving, is released to 3,603 US theaters. The film is the sequel to the 1999 blockbuster The Matrix. Produced on a budget of US$150 million, it will gross US$91,774,413 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: R) Running Time: 2 hrs 18 mins

Microsoft releases the subscription-only MSN for Mac OS X browser, which uses an upgraded version of Tasman (version 0.9) as its layout engine.

2004
Josh Findley discovers the forty-first Mersenne prime, 2^24,036,583 – 1. The number was discovered using a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 computer.

A portion of the source code of the Cisco Internetwork Operating System (IOS), used on the vast majority of Cisco’s routers and network switches, is illegally copied and posted to the Internet by a Swedish teenager. Visit the official Cisco IOS website.

2005
Two additional moons of Pluto are imaged by astronomers working with the Hubble Space Telescope. They receive the provisional designations S/2005 P 1 and S/2005 P 2. The International Astronomical Union will officially name Pluto’s newest moons Nix (otherwise known as Pluto II), the inner of the two moons, and Hydra (otherwise known as Pluto III), the outer moon, on June 21, 2006.

2006
Google launches Google Notebook, an application that allows users to organize and save text. Visit the official Google Notebook website.

NBC officially announces the cancellation the television series Surface despite average ratings, leaving the outcome of the plot as a cliffhanger ending.

2008
CBS Corporation agrees to acquire the popular technology news site CNET Networks for US$11.50 a share, US$1.75 billion. The deal will reportedly make CBS “one of the 10 most popular Internet companies in the United States”, with 200 million readers worldwide, according to CBS. Visit the official CNet website.