The Great Geek Manual

1536
Florentine merchant Francesco Lapi uses the @ sign for the first time in recorded history in a letter.

1780
The first US national arts and science society is incorporated. It is chartered in Boston, Massachusetts “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, dignity, honor and happiness of a free, independent and virtuous people.” The first society president is James Bowdoin. The original incorporators will later be joined by Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Bulfinch, Alexander Hamilton, and John Quincy Adams, among others.

1884
The first photograph of a flash of lightning is taken in the US by W.C. Gurley of the Marietta Observatory in Ohio. The flash is about three miles distant from the camera.

1886
Three patents for recording and reproducing sound relating to a phonograph disk records are issued to Chichester Bell and Charles S. Tainter. (US No. 341,212-4) Alexander Graham Bell is a joint partner on two of the patents. From these designs, Bell & Tainter manufacture the first practical phonograph, an improvement on Edison’s original called a graphophone. What this new device lacks in sound volume compared with Edison’s tin-foil cylinders, it more than gains in clarity and reduced surface noise. Although more suitable for listening through ear-tubes, it also allows for greater recording time per cylinder by using a narrower groove pitch. It can be powered by foot-treddles or an electric motor, resulting in a more consistent pitch.

1887
Emile Berliner applies for a US patent on a “gramophone”, that initially makes use of a cylinder, but that will use a disc by the time the first model is shown a year later. His principal innovation at this stage is the use of lateral cutting of the recording groove, as used in Scott’s phonautograph and later proposed by Charles Cros and Charles Tainter rather than the vertical “hill and dale” cutting of Edison’s phonograph.

1914
Thomas J. Watson, earlier fired from NCR, takes over as General Manager of C-T-R. IBM has traditionally recognized this date as its corporate anniversary.

1951
As part of the Festival of Britain, the Telekinema shows 3D and stereophonic films, as well as live large-screen transmissions of interviews from a nearby studio. The Telekinema later becomes the National Film Theatre. Read more about the event at Luxonline.

1973
The Sears Building in Chicago, Illinois becomes the first building over fourteen hundred feet tall, at 1,454 feet or 1,707 feet, if you count its antennas. The Sears Tower was designed to accommodate more than twelve thousand occupants. It takes the title of world’s tallest building from the 1,250 foot tall Empire State Building of New York City, which had been dedicated on May 1, 1931. Read more about the world’s tallest buildings.

1980
The final episode of the science fiction television series Galactica 1980, “The Return of Starbuck,” first airs. (No. 10) In it, Starbuck crash lands on a planet with a single Cylon whom he slowly befriends over time. The series ran one season of ten episodes. TV.com entry

1987
Journalist Kathleen Burton publishes an article in Investor’s Daily entitled, “Atari Reports Fourfold Increase In 1st-Qtr Earnings”. In the article, Michael Murphy is quotes as stating that “Atari’s recent earnings show that Tramiel’s strategy is working”.

1989
The space probe Magellan is launched in the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle Atlantis from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The space probe was named after the 16th-century Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. It will become the first planetary spacecraft to be released from a shuttle into Earth’s orbit. It’s mission is to travel to Venus, where it will enter orbit and collect data.

1992
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Imaginary Friend” first airs. (No. 522) In it, a child’s imaginary playmate takes on real form and threatens the well-being of the Enterprise. Memory Alpha entry

1995
German electronics manufacturer Escom AG pays acquires the rights to the name and intellectual property of former computer pioneer Commodore Electronics Ltd. for US$10 million. Commodore declared bankruptcy in 1994, but Escom plans to resume production of the Commodore personal computer, including the Amiga.

1997
Chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov loses the second of six games against IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer. Kasparov will eventually loose the match along with the US$1.1 million purse to the IBM supercomputer, which he had previously claimed could never surpass a human’s ability to play chess.

Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore Business Machines, is honored in a story written by Leslie Katz and published in the San Jose Mercury News. The story reveals a look into the mind of a ruthless businessman who, as a young teenager, watched as his father was injected with gasoline to quicken his death at Auschwitz.

1998
The first strip of the popular webcomic PvP is posted online. The series chronicles the adventures of a fictional video game magazine company and its employees. The comic features a great deal of humor related to “nerd culture” and related topics, including comics, roleplaying, and videogaming. Read the very first strip at the PvP archives.

The two millionth internet domain name, “voyagerstravel.com,” is registered.

Yahoo! launches Yahoo! Chinese.

1999
America Online (AOL) repairs a glitch that stopped subscribers using an Apple Macintosh computer from using their system for almost an entire month. AOL admits the problem may have affected as many as 760,000 users of versions 3.0 or 4.0 of AOL’s client software. Users would experience the problem if they checked a specific option box during an email attachment download.

Midway Games, Inc. and WMS Industries, Inc. launch an Internet-based coin-operated video game “locator” on their website at http://www.midwayarcade.com/locations and http://www.midway.com. The application helps video game players locate their favorite games in arcades and other locations near them.

2000
The “ILOVEYOU” virus continues to spread via e-mail attachments, disrupting computers everywhere. Once a computer is infected, it destroys files used to stores music and images. It also sends clones of itself to everyone in the user’s address book. It is named for the ILOVEYOU subject line it uses to entice victims to open the message. Officials say that the virus originated through someone who calls himself “Spyder”. London’s House of Commons, Ford Motor Company, and Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) are among the many organizations forced to take down all or part of their email system to correct the problems cause by the worm.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in California rules in favor of an injunction that prevents Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) from “taking any actions to restrict or intefere with Bleem’s ability to demonstrate its products using PlayStation videogames, including PlayStation videogames in which Sony claims copyright, at the E3 2000 trade show.” A significant adjunct to the ruling is that Bleem may show screenshots of the videogames that it emulates. BLEEM! is a controversial emulator that enables many PlayStation games to run on a Personal Computer (PC). It is published by the company of the same name.

2001
The Gibson Security Research Corp becomes the victim of a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks, which result in the website being forced offline. The attacks are perpetrated by “Wicked,” a 13-year-old hacker, who is, at first, operating under the mistaken belief that Steve Gibson had called him a name during the course of an IRC chat session, then, later, simply because it was fun. Read more about the incident and those that will follow at the Gibson Research Corporation website.

2002
The film Spider-Man sets an all-time record for the highest earnings in a single day with US$43,622,264 in box office sales on the second day of its release.

The first national Free Comic Book Day is held in the US, just days after the opening of the first Spider-Man film in theaters. Free Comic Book Day has three main purposes: 1) To introduce everyone to the joys of reading comics. 2) To lure back former comic book readers 3) To thank current comic book buyers for their continued support.

2003
The first cloned equine, a mule foal named Idaho Gem is born at the University of Idaho. Researchers cloned the mule using a cell from a mule fetus and an egg from a horse. Mules are almost always sterile because donkeys have sixty-two chromosomes, while horses have sixty-four and mules end up with sixty-three. Equines such as horses, donkeys and mules are difficult to reproduce in the lab using in vitro fertilization and cloning. The cloning success rate is typically low. Of three hundred seven attempts, there were only twenty-one pregnancies and three carried to full-term. Idaho Gem is the first to be born. Two others will follow in June and July. The project’s major sponsor is a mule racing enthusiast. Unable to breed new animals from proven race stock, mule cloning is a new option.

2004
The National Science Board releases a study entitled “Science and Engineering Indicators 2004″ warning that although 38 percent of the nation’s current crop of scientists and engineers with doctorates are foreign born,it predicts that the US will face a shortage of scientists because too few Americans are entering technical fields.

The Sasser worm is estimated to have hit more that on million PC’s, world-wide.

2005
The real time fantasy Computer role-playing game Dungeon Lords is released. The game is poorly received by the gaming community. Many will criticize the game’s initial release as a rushed project, released before it was truly finished. Some will go so far as to say the game is still in the beta Development stage. GameOver Game Reviews even claims that “Dungeon Lords marks a new low for how incomplete a game can be and still get released.” Visit the game’s official website.

Mars Express deploys the first of its two 20-meter-long radar booms for its Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) experiment. At first, the boom doesn’t lock fully into place; however, exposing it to sunlight for a few minutes on May 10 will fix the glitch. The second 20 meter boom will be successfully deployed on June 14. Both booms are required to create a 40 meter dipole antenna for MARSIS to work. Visit the official MARSIS website.

The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) airs an episode of the Maya & Miguel animated television series in the US. In the episode, the characters make a bet to see if a child can stop playing video games for a week.

2006
The film Elephants Dream is released to the Internet after its March 24th premiere. Elephants Dream is a computer-generated short film made in eight months, using only free, open-source software applications, such as Blender, a 3D modelling, animating, and rendering application. Visit the official website of Elephants Dream.

Microsoft announces a lawsuits for allegedly distributing unauthorized copies of Windows against eDirectSoftware of Montana, and Chicagoland resellers Nathan Ballog and Easy Computers.

SQLite Database Browser version 1.3 is released.

2007
The film Spider-Man 3, directed by Sam Raimi and starring Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, and James Franco, is released to 4,252 US theaters. It is based on the Marvel Comics character Spider-Man. Produced on a budget of US$258 million, it will gross US$151,116,516 domestically in its opening weekend. Visit this film’s official website. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 2 hrs 20 mins

Microsoft releases the Xbox 360 Elite in Canada.