The Great Geek Manual

1809
The first patent issued in the US for a metallic writing pen is issued to Peregrine Williamson, a Baltimore jeweler. The pens are made of steel rolled from wire to for a steel quill that never needs its nib to be sharpened. A few steel pens have already been in use in Britain.

1899
The Marconi Wireless Company of America is incorporated in New Jersey.

1904
The first direct current, electric motor to be patented in the US is issued to Mathias Pfatischer of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (US No.775,310) The “Variable Speed Motor” is designed to “effect commutation without sparking, with a variable load as well as at variable speed and which is capable of rotation in either direction.”

1906
The International Radio Telegraphic Convention in Berlin adopts the Morse code representation of the letters S.O.S. as a universal distress signal. The previous distress signal was C.Q.D., which was the usual call sign CQ, plus the letter “D” for Distress.

1932
The first US patent for a computer-controlled gasoline pump is issued to inventors Robert J. Jauch, Ivan R. Farnham and Ross H. Arnold. (US No. 1,888,533) The “Liquid Dispensing Apparatus” meters fluids while displaying the exact amount (in gallons) dispensed.

1946
J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly leave the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering, where they had developed ENIAC, the first digital computer, after a dispute arose over their right to their intellectual property rights in regard to ENIAC. Irven Travis, head of research at the Moore School, had requested that they relinquish the patents they developed while at the school. The two will later develop UNIVAC, the first general purpose business computer, while the school eventually looses its position as a national leader in computer science.

1966
A USSR chess program begins a correspondence match with the Kotok-McCarthy MIT chess program, the first computer capable of playing chess convincingly. It is the first game of chess ever played between two computers. The match will last nine months and will be won by the Soviet computer, three wins to one.

1968
The Star Trek episode “Plato’s Stepchildren” first airs. (No. 67/65) In it, the crew of the Enterprise encounters an ageless and mischievous race of psychic humanoids who claim to have organized their society around Ancient Greek ideals. Memory Alpha entry

1969
The lunar module of Apollo 12, which was launched on November 14, lands on the southeastern Oceanus Procellarum region of the Moon.

1971
International Business Machines (IBM) The Data Processing Division (DPD) releases the IBM 3872 and IBM 3875 modems.

1981
According to Twin Galaxies, Al Hokeness scores a record-setting 5,205,000 points on Atari’s Battlezone after playing the game for four hours and thirty minutes at University Game Room in Madison, Wisconsin. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

1984
Twentieth Century Fox releases the comedy film Revenge of the Nerds, directed by Jeff Kanew and starring Robert Carradine, Anthony Edwards, Timothy Busfield, Curtis Armstrong, Ted McGinley, Bernie Casey, and John Goodman, to 364 US theaters. In it, a group of nerds tries to put an end to the harassment of a fraternity of jocks, the Alpha Betas. Produced on a budget of US$8 million, it will gross US$1,513,090 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing MPAA Rating: R Running Time: 1 hr 30 mins

1985
John Sculley of Apple Computer and Bill Gates of Microsoft sign a licensing agreement permitting Microsoft royalty-free use of the visual characteristics of the Macintosh for Windows 1.0 (two days after the system’s release), while committing Microsoft to releasing versions of its most popular applications for the Macintosh and an official acknowledgment that “the visual displays in [Excel, Windows, Word, and Multiplan] are derivative works of the visual displays generated by Apple’s Lisa and Macintosh graphic user interface programs.”

1989
Universal Pictures releases the science fiction film Back to the Future Part II, directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, and Thomas F. Wilson, to 1,865 US theaters. In it, Marty McFly and Doc Brown make an exhilarating visit to the year 2015 seemingly to resolve a few problems with the future McFly family. But when the two return home, they soon discover someone has tampered with time to produce a nightmarish Hill Valley, 1985. Their only hope is to once again get back to 1955 and save the future. In the film, Elijah Fox age eight, is credited as the “Video Game Boy,” although undocumented references refer to the character as Mickey. In one scene, Marty McFly enters the Café 80’s and recognizes an arcade video game called Wild Gunman and begins to play it. Watching him play, Mickey asks, “You mean you have to use your hands?” Produced on a budget of US$40 million, it will gross US$27,835,125 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing MPAA Rating: PG Running Time: 1 hrs 48 mins

1993
Intel begins shipping production versions of the Pentium processor.

The NonStop-UX B22 operating system is released.

The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Inheritance” first airs. (No. 710) In it, Data encounters a woman claiming to be his “mother.” Memory Alpha entry

1994
Novell acquires the WordPerfect Corporation for WordPerfect and Borland International’s Quattro Pro in an attempt to wrest market share from Microsoft’s own word processing and spreadsheet suite, Microsoft Office. Ultimately, the strategy will fail. The WordPerfect suite will decline until it holds only twenty percent of the market in 1996, and in January 1996, Corel will buy the WordPerfect Corporation from Novell.

Sega releases the Sega Saturn video game system in Japan. The system features two 28.6 MHz 32-bit Hitachi SH7064 RISC processors, two video display processors, a Hitachi SH7034 processor controlling the double-speed CD-ROM drive, a Tamaha FH1 digital signal processor, a Motorola 68EC000 sound processor, QSound surround sound, 2MB main memory, 1.5 MB video memory, a memory cartridge slot, and an expansion slot. Price: ¥44,800 (about US$450)

Version 2.0 of the FreeBSD operating system is released.

1995
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution releases the animated film Toy Story, directed by John Lasseter and featuring the voice talents of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen, to 2,457 US theaters. The film, which was produced by Pixar, a studio founded by Steve Jobs, is the first feature-length film created completely using computer-generated imagery. One hundred ten people were involved in the creation of the film, but, thanks to the company’s proprietary software, only twenty-eight of them were animators. The one hundred ten thousand frames of the film were rendered over the course of eight hundred thousand machine hours on Pixar’s “RenderFarm” of eighty-seven SparcStation 20 workstations and single SparcServer 1000. Each frame of the film was roughly 500Mb of data. Produced on a budget of US$30 million, it will gross US$29,140,617 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing MPAA Rating: G Running Time: 1 hr 21 mins

Symantec completes the acquisition of Delrina, a Canadian software company, in a stock deal worth over CDN$500 million.

1996
Bandai releases the original Tamagotchi virtual keychain-size pet in Japan. The devices are available in six color combinations, including: blue with yellow buttons and a clock face, clear blue with yellow buttons, light blue with pink numbers, orange with yellow buttons, red with blue buttons and a clock face, and white with black buttons. The name Tamagotchi is a portmanteau which combines the Japanese word “tamago,” which means “egg,” and the English word “watch.” Visit the official Tamagotchi website. Price: ¥1,980 (about US$19.80)

Nintendo announces that it has achieved a sixty-two percent share of the next generation game market in the United States. The data backing the claim is derived from the Nintendo 64 video game system’s first six weeks’ sales figures. However, some experts find the claim dubious, criticizing the company’s decision to include the Super Nintendo’s market share into the figure.

Paramount Pictures releases the science fiction film Star Trek: First Contact, directed by Jonathan Frakes and starring Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Alfre Woodard, James Cromwell, and Alice Krige to 2,812 US theaters. It is the eighth feature film in the Star Trek franchise. In it, the crew of the Enterprise encounter the Borg, who seek to change history by conquering the Earth by traveling through time to the 21st century. Produced on a budget of US$45million, it will gross US$30,716,131 domestically in its opening weekend. Visit the film’s official website. IMDB listing MPAA Rating: PG-13 Running Time: 1 hr 53 mins

Twentieth Century Fox releases the science fiction film Independence Day (ID4), directed by Roland Emmerich and starring Jeff Goldblum, Will Smith, Bill Pullman, Margaret Colin, Vivica A. Fox, Judd Hirsch, Mary McDonnell, Robert Loggia, and
Randy Quaid, to 2,882 US theaters. In the film, communications systems worldwide are sent into chaos by a strange atmospheric interference. The military soon discovers that a number of enormous objects are on a collision course with Earth. Though they are first thought to be meteors, they are later revealed to be gigantic spacecraft. After attempts to communicate with the aliens fail, David Levinson, an ex-scientist turned cable technician, realizes that the aliens are going to attack major points around the globe in less than a day. On July 3rd, the aliens obliterate New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, as welll as most of Earth’s other major metropolitan areas. At Area 51, a government testing ground where the military has studied a captured alien spacecraft, the survivors devise a plan to fight back, and, on July 4th, humanity fights back. Produced on a budget of US$75 million, it will gross US$50,228,264 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing

Blogger’s note: Independence Day makes use of many ideas and troupes from the 1956 film, “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers,” directed by Fred F. Sears. The film is also known as Invasion of the Flying Saucers. It is based on the novel Flying Saucers from Outer Space by Donald Kehoe. Both films featured ground breaking special effects and the same general premise.

1997
Eidos Interactive releases the third-person shooter Tomb Raider II for the PlayStation in the US. ESRB: T (Teen)

The website of twenty-eight Indonesian domains, most of which belonged to government organizations, are hacked by the hacking group “PHAIT (Portuguese Hackers Against Indonesian Tiranny)”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

1999
A class-action lawsuit is filed in San Francisco Superior Court by attorney Joseph Saveri of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP against the Microsoft Corporation on behalf of all customers who bought Windows 95 and 98 operating systems from Microsoft between August 1, 1995 and the present. The suit alleges that the company overcharges consumers for the operating systems, joining other suits in Alabama, Louisiana, Ohio and other states.

America Online (AOL) and Electronic Arts (EA) announce a five-year strategic relationship to create and deliver online interactive content for AOL properties.

Apple announces that its blueberry iBook was the number one selling portable computer in the US retail market in October, according to the monthly hardware report by PC Data. Based on the report, the combined sales of Apple’s iBook and PowerBook portable computer lines give Apple an eleven percent share of the US retail portable market for the month.

Microsoft announces a newly signed agreement with America Online (AOL) to provide DirectX 7.0 game software components for online gaming.

Microsoft releases Service Pack 6 for Windows NT 4.0.

Professor Chenming Hu at the University of California, Berkeley, announces a new semiconductor transistor that can now hold four hundred times more than it’s previous capacity. The new prototype is called “FinFET” and the new gate size is eighteen nanometers long, about the width of one hundred atoms

Sega announces that one million units of the Dreamcast video game system have been sold in North America to date.

2000
Touchstone Pictures releases Unbreakable, directed by M. Night Shyamalan and starring Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Robin Wright Penn, and Spencer Treat Clark, to 2,708 US theaters. In it, a security guard named David Dunn is coming home from work, when the train he is on is suddenly derailed. The train crashes, and he is the sole survivor of 132 passengers, without a scratch on his body. Soon after, he is contacted by comic-book store owner Elijah Price who is convinced that David is a superhero. Produced on a budget of US$75 million, it will gross US$30,330,771 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing MPAA Rating: PG-13 Running Time: 1 hr 46 mins

2002
Lisa Chen, a 52-year-old Taiwanese woman who pleaded no contest in one of the largest software piracy cases in the history of the US was sentenced to nine years in prison, one of the longest sentences ever for a case involving software piracy. Chen was arrested along with three associates in a November 2001 raid during which local sheriffs seized hundreds of thousands of copies of pirated software worth more than US$75 million, which Chen had smuggled from Taiwan.

Midway releases Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance for the Game Boy Advance, GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox in the US. Midway declares the day “Fatality Friday.” It is chronologically the fifth game in the Mortal Kombat series. Visit the game’s official website.

2004
Nokia releases Requiem of Hell for the Nokia N-Gage.

2005
Activision releases the first-person shooter Quake 4 for the Xbox 360. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: M (Mature) PEGI: 18+ USK: 16+

Electronic Arts releases the racing game Need for Speed: Most Wanted for the Xbox 360 in the US. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: T(Teen)

Microsoft launches the Xbox 360 video game system in North America. The system features an IBM PowerPC CPU with three 3.2GHz cores, a 500 MHz ATI graphics card with a 10MB cache, and 512 MB RAM. The Xbox 360 is the first console with the ability to use wireless controllers out of the box. The system is available in four versions: a “Core” version for US$249, a “Premium” Version for US$349, an “Elite” version for US$449, and a Halo 3 limited edition, US$399. The biggest difference between these versions is the addition of a 20GB hard drive in the “Premium” edition, a 120GB hard drive and HDMI in the “Elite” edition, and a specially designed case in the Halo edition. Code-name: Xenon

Microsoft launches Xbox Live Arcade.

Microsoft releases eighteen game titles and a wide variety of accessories for the Xbox 360 video game system in North America, including memory units and a headset.

Version 1.0 of the QiLinux Docet operating system is released. Visit the system’s official website.

Version 4.2 of the Scientific Linux operating system is released by the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) under a GNU General Public License. Visit the system’s official website.

2006
Microsoft releases an Xbox 360 update for high-definition displays.

United States Librarian of Congress James H. Billington announces the approval of six new exemptions to U.S. Copyright law. The exemptions include: 1.) the right for film professors to copy clips from audiovisual works for classroom use, 2.) the right to archive software and video games distributed in formats that required obsolete hardware to operate, 3.) the right for users to circumvent access protection to software protected by dongles that are malfunctioning or damaged, 4.) the right for the blind to circumvent copy protections on ebook formats that prevent read-aloud functions for the purpose of rendering the text into a screen-readable format, 5.) the right for cellphone owners to unlock their phones for the purpose of switching carriers, and 6.) the right of owners to crack the copy protections of compact discs they have lawfully purchased. It is the first time in history U.S. copyright exemptions have been made for individual groups, such as archivists and the blind. Analysts and commentators receive the surprising announcement as a sign the government’s growth and acceptance of the new digital age.