The Great Geek Manual

1790
Acting on a motion made by Bishop Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, the French National Assembly decides to create a simple decimal system of measurement units. The earliest metre unit chosen will be the length of a pendulum with a half-period of a second. On March 30, 1791, after a proposal by the Académie des sciences, the Assembly will revise the definition of the metre as one ten millionth of the distance between the north pole and the equator. On April 7, 1795, the Convention decrees that the new “Republican Measures” will become legal measures in France. The metric system will adopt greek prefixes for multiples and latin prefixes for decimal fractions.

1840
The first US photographic patent is issued to Alexander S. Wolcott of New York City. (US No. 1,582) His “method of taking a likeness by means of a concave reflector and plates so prepared that luminous or other rays will act thereon” produced photographs 1.75 x 2.5 inches in size. The photographs weren’t reversed as were daguerrotype which used refracting lenses.

1886
Coca-Cola is first sold to the public at the soda fountain in Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia. It was invented by pharmacist, John Stith Pemberton, who mixed it in a thirty gallon brass kettle hung over a backyard fire. Until 1905, the drink, marketed as a “brain and nerve tonic,” will contain extracts of cocaine as well as the caffeine-rich kola nut. The name, using two C’s from its ingredients, was suggested by his bookkeeper Frank Robinson, whose excellent penmanship provided the first scripted “Coca-Cola” letters as the famous logo. Read more about Pemberton at the New Georgia Encyclopedia.

1914
The Paramount Pictures Corporation is incorporated as a distribution company in New York by William Wadsworth Hodkinson. Hodkinson had originally founded a distribution company named Progressive Pictures on the west coast to distribute films for a number of independent production companies like the Famous Players Film Company and the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company, but when he decided to take his company national, he discovered that a New York company was already using the name. Among producers signing to be distributed by Paramount are Adolph Zukor and Jesse Lasky. W.W. Hodkinson will eventually come to be known as “the man who invented Hollywood.” Through Paramount, he will single-handedly change the way movies are produced, distributed, and exhibited. Learn more about Hodkinson at the Hollywood Renegades Archive.

1931
John Logie Baird transmits pictures of available-light street scenes, using a mirror-drum scanner mounted in a van. Soon after, Baird forms a new company, Baird Television Ltd. As well as developing the television imaging and broadcasting technology, the company will also produces kits from which to build receivers. Browse photos of Baird’s mirror-drum scanners at the Early Television Foundation.

1947
The United States House Un-America Activities Committee (HUAC), chaired by John Parnell Thomas, convenes in Hollywood to investigate communism in the film industry.

1963
The classic monster movie The Evil of Frankenstein, starring Peter Cushing, is released to UK theaters.

1984
Infocom releases Sorcerer Release 6 for IBM compatible personal computers. Sorcerer is an interactive fantasy fiction computer game written by Steve Meretzky. Read more about Sorcerer at Elsewhere or If.org.

1985
Kaypro introduces a slimmed-down version of its Kaypro 2861 computer, compatible with the IBM AT. Price: US$2,995

1988
A fire at Hinsdale Central Office of Illinois Bell causes an extended 1AESS network outage that will long be considered the worst telecommunications disaster in US telephone industry history.

1989
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Q Who?” first airs. (No. 242) In the episode, Q fires the ship to the other side of the galaxy and introduces the crew of the Enterprise to the deadly Borg. Memory Alpha entry

1990
Lewis Galoob Toys (makers of Micro Machines) introduces the Game Genie cartridge for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The “Game Enhancer” provides “cheats” that makes NES games easier to play. View an original Game Genie magazine advertisement at NES-Retromaailma.

1994
The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “The Wire” first airs. (No. 222) In the episode, in order to save Garak’s life, Bashir must unravel some of the secrets in the Cardassian’s past. Memory Alpha entry

1995
The New York Times announces that it will join eight other newspaper publishers in the New Century Network, a national internet network that will publish their entire papers’ content online every day. The event marks the beginning of the shift away from hard copy to web publication for US papers.

The Star Trek: Voyager episode “Faces” first airs. (No. 114) In the episode, B’Elanna Torres is split into her human and Klingon halves by the Vidiians. Memory Alpha entry

1997
Apple Computer introduces the PowerBook 2400c notebook computer, featuring a 180MHz PowerPC 603e processor, a 1.3GB hard drive, a 10.4-inch active-matrix color display, two PC Card slots. The small laptops are intended for release in Japan, where they will be available at the end of May; however, high demand for a sub-notebook, will lead to the system’s release in the US at the end of July. Price: US$3,500 Weight: 4.4 pounds

Bell Canada and Telus are authorized by the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission to conduct two-year experiments delivering telecommunications and broadcasting services over specially-built digital networks. Bell Canada’s system connects to 3,500 homes in London, Ontario and Repentigny, Quebec, while the Telus connects to 2,000 subscribers in Calgary and 1,400 subscribers in Edmonton.

1998
Paramount Pictures releases the science fiction film Deep Impact, starring Elijah Wood, Morgan Freeman, and Robert Duvall, is released to 3,156 US theaters. In the film, a comet is on a course to collide with Earth, and people must cope with the fact that they will die. The President (Morgan Freeman) has devised a plan to keep as many humans alive as possible. Scientists have built giant caves big enough to hold a million people, and the government is going to have a lottery to pick 800,000 people to live in the caves along with 200,000 scientists, artists and doctors. Produced on a budget of US$75 million, the film will gross US$41,152,375 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 2 hrs

2001
The Sadmind worm spreads by exploiting holes in both Sun Microsystem’s Solaris (Security Bulletin 00191) and Microsoft’s Internet Information Services (MS00-078).

2002
The Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Fallen Hero” first airs. (No. 123) In the episode, the Enterprise finds itself under attack while transporting a Vulcan ambassador who happens to be T’Pol’s hero. Memory Alpha entry

2005
Lego Star Wars: Revenge of the Brick, a LEGO-brick mini-movie based loosely on Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, premieres on Cartoon Network. Watch the entire mini-movie on the LEGO Star Wars website.

JavE 6.0 Milestone 5 is released. JavE stands for Java Ascii Versatile Editor. As the name suggests, it is a GUI tool written in Java for drawing ASCII art.

2006
At a press conference in Los Angeles before the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), Sony announces that the PlayStation 3 will feature a motion-sensing Bluetooth wireless controller, Wi-Fi wireless, and HDMI video output. The system is scheduled for a November 11th release in Japan and a November 17th release in the US. Price: US$499 with a 20GB hard drive, US$599 with a 60GB hard drive

The case of Apple Corps v. Apple Computer, which was filed by Apple Corps against Apple Inc. in September 2003 in the UK, ends in a victory for Apple Computer. In the lawsuit, Apple Corps, a company founded by The Beatles to promote, manage, and distribute their music and merchandise, alleged that the introductions of the iTunes Music Store and the iPod are violations of an earlier agreement between the two companies that prohibited Apple Computer from distributing music.

Researchers at St Andrews University announce that they have determined that dolphins are able to recognize themselves and other members of the same species as individuals with separate identities, using whistles in much the same way as humans use names.

Version 4.00 of the PureBasic programming language is released for Windows. This version brought a new maturity to the language by adding much-requested features such as: Colors for all gadgets, faster file operations due to buffering, Unicode support, UDP network support, unlimited-length strings, fixed-length strings, thread-safety, ‘EnableExplicit’ command to prevent mistyped variable names, new data types of Characters/Doubles/Quads, Xor and Not operators, macros, multiple ‘Case’ selection (eg. 1 To 5), a new ‘Process’ library for manipulating system processes, and an updated OGRE game engine. Visit the official Pure Basic website.

2007
At the JavaOne conference in San Francisco, Sun Microsystems announces that it has finished making the bulk of its core Java technology available as open-source software under the GNU general public license. Sun remains unable to release all 6.5 million lines of its code because it doesn’t hold sufficient rights to the code, particularly its Java 2D graphics technology.

With nearly eleven weeks to go till the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Amazon.com announces that it has taken more than one million pre-orders for the book worldwide and that it has lowered the price of the book yet again.

2008
In a four-page ruling, US District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper orders the popular bittorrent indexing website TorrentSpy to pay $30,000 for “each of the 3,699 infringements shown,” or US$110 million, to the Motion Picture Association of America for facilitating the illegal sharing of copyrighted files. Cooper also issues a permanent injunction against the website. The judgment is one of the largest fines ever handed down for copyright theft, and Dan Glickman, chairman of the MPAA, immediately touts the ruling as “a clear victory for the studios.” The ruling comes shortly after the site shut down on March 24th, leaving a message saying it had closed as “the ultimate method of privacy protection.”