The Great Geek Manual

1676
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek applies his hobby of making microscopes from his own handmade lenses to observe some water running off a roof during a heavy rainstorm. He finds that it contains, in his words, “very little animalcules.” The life he has found in the runoff water is not present in pure rainwater. This was a fundamental discovery, for it demonstrates that the bacteria and one-celled animals don’t fall from the sky. When a ball of molten glass is inflated like a balloon, a small droplet of the hot fluid collects at the very bottom the bubble. Leeuwenhoek uses these droplets as microscope lenses to view the animalcules. Despite their crude nature, those early lenses enable Leeuwenhoek to describe an amazing world of microscopic life.

1874
Thomas A. Edison is issued a patent for a device concerning “Automatic Telegraphy and in Perforators Therefor.” (US No. 151,209) This is just one of many patents on telegraphy he obtains early in his career. He applied for his first patent on November 28, 1868 for an “Electrographic Vote-Recorder.” A couple of months later, his second patent application, on January 25, 1869, began a period of nine years of patenting inventions primarily related to printing telegraphs, electromagnetics, switches and circuit for telegraphy. This invention produced a message directly onto a strip of paper such that it was ready to be folded and sent to its destination immediately. Letters were formed by a 5×5 square of 25 punch wires.

1928
The first motion picture is projected publicly in Athens, Greece.

1930
Song of a Nightingale is broadcast live by the BBC from a wood in Berkshire.

1931
A microfilm camera is patented by New York City banker, George L. McCarthy. (US No. 1,806,763) He develops the first practical commercial microfilm use in the 1920’s and was issued a patent in 1925 for his Checkograph machine, designed to make permanent film copies of all bank records to deter fraud. That device used motion picture film and a conveyor belt to photograph checks before they were returned to bank customers. In 1928 Eastman Kodak bought his invention and began to market it with McCarthy as president of Kodak’s Recordak Division. With a perfected 35mm microfilm camera, Recordak in 1935 expanded and began filming and publishing the New York Times on microfilm.

1932
Canadian Broadcasting Act is passed, creating the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (CRBC) to administer a national service with a monopoly on network broadcasting, although some private stations not required to form the national service are to continue operations.

1955
Coverage of the UK General Election results is the largest television programme event yet in the UK, involving 37 cameras (cf, 1953 June 2)—including 18 outside broadcast locations—and a team of more than 500 people, including seven statisticians to calculate the ‘swing’ in voting. An electronic computer is used to analyse results. The programme continues until 4am and resumes after a two-hour break for most of the following day.

1969
the Apollo 10 astronauts returned to Earth after a successful eight-day dress rehearsal for the first manned moon landing. Apollo 10 mission, launched 18 May, was a complete staging of the Apollo 11 mission without actually landing on the Moon. The mission was the second to orbit the Moon and the first to travel to the Moon with the entire Apollo spacecraft configuration. Astronauts Thomas Stafford and Eugene Cernan descended inside the Lunar Module to within 14 kilometers of the lunar surface (achieving the closest approach to the Moon before Apollo 11 landed two months later). Apollo 10 splashed down at 12:52 pm on 26 May, less than 4 miles (6.4 km) from the target point and the recovery ship

Apollo 10 returns to earth after a successful eight-day test of all the components needed for the forthcoming first manned moon landing.

1981
Satya Pal Asija was the first in the U.S. to receive a patent for computer software for his computer program Swift-Answer (an acronym for “Special Word Indexed Full Text Alpha Numeric Storage With Easy Retrieval”) that allows users to retrieve narrative information from computers in a human-like manner. The program responds to a user’s questions with the most likely answer – despite the user’s errors in syntax, punctuation, spelling, and grammar. The user needs no computer programing skills. His application for the patent took seven years to issue. (U.S. No. 4,270,182). He published a book on his experience, How to Protect Computer Programs – a Case History Of The First Pure Software Patent, in 1986.

1984
In Houston, Texas, fourteen top scorers from fourteen regions of the US compete in the Grand National Finals of Konami’s Track & Field arcade game. The top three will play in Japan in June against Japan’s top three players.

1994
Midway releases Mortal Kombat for the Sega CD in the US.

1995
Realizing that his company had missed the boat in estimating the impact and popularity of the Internet, Microsoft Corp. CEO Bill Gates issued a memo entitled, “The Internet Tidal Wave,” which signals the company’s renewed focus in the field, calling it “critical to every part of our business.” In the memo, Gates declares that the Internet is the “most important single development” since the IBM personal computer, to which he attributes “the highest level of importance.”

1998
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) releases the K6-2 processor, available in 266, 300, or 333 MHz speeds with a 100 MHz bus and cache, 3DNow! instructions, and incorporating 9.3 million transistors.

2002
The Mars Odyssey finds signs of huge water ice deposits on the planet Mars.

2003
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) releases the Athlon XP 3000+ desktop processor, featuring a 400 MHz system bus. Price: US$280 in 1000-unit quantities

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) releases the Athlon XP 3200+ processor., featuring a 333 MHz front-side bus. Price: US$464 in 1000-unit quantities

Palm announces that it has sold one million Zire handheld computers.