The Great Geek Manual

Today is national Freethought Day, an observation of the end of the Salem Witch Trials celebrating secular freethinkers everywhere.

1923
Axel Petersen and Arnold Poulsen demonstrate their patented sound-film system using two interlocked machines, one for picture, one for optical sound, at the Palads Teatret, in Copenhagen. The system is subsequently used by Gaumont in France, Tonfilm in Germany, and Gaumont-British in the UK.

1958
Texas Instruments (TI) demonstrates working Integrated Circuits (IC) to Thomas J. Watson, Jr., president of International Business Machines (IBM).

1964
The Soviet Union (USSR) launches the Voskhod 1 spacecraft. It’s the first spacecraft to carry multiple crew members and the first to carry either a scientist or a physician into space. In the rush to launch the mission before the NASA Gemini flights, the crew are launched without ejection seats, an escape tower, or even spacesuits (which in itself was a first). The mission will return television footage of the crew from space. The US will be left incensed that the Gemini flights had been upstaged, and the US-Soviet “Space Race” escalates. The three-man crew will return to Earth after sixteen orbits of the Earth, one day and seventeen minutes after its launched, using retro rockets just prior to impact in order to cushion the parachute landing. NASA Project Gemini site

1979
Pan Books publishes the science fiction novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams as a paperback in the UK. (ISBN: 0-330-25864-8) The novel is an adaptation of the first four parts of Adams’s radio series of the same name. It will top national book charts in its second week of release, and it will go on to sell over a quarter million copies of the book will be sold within three months of its release. Length: 180pp

1981
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Intel signs a ten year technology exchange agreement centering on Intel’s x86 microprocessor architecture.

1987
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Code of Honor” first airs. (No. 104) In it, Tasha Yar is abducted by the leader of a people who abides by a strict code of honor, which results in a fight to the death. Memory Alpha entry

1988
Del Rey publishes the science fiction novel Dragonsdawn by Anne McCaffrey as a hardcover. (ISBN-10: 0345331605) The book is chronologically the first book in the Dragonriders of Pern series. In it, the planet Pern seems a paradise to its new colonists, who are seeking to return to an simpler, agrarian-based way of life. Admiral Benden, Governor Boll and the rest of the colonists had selected Pern as a place to leave their recent wars and troubles behind. Shortly after arriving on the planet, however, a serious threat appears, the Thread. Length: 431 pages

The new company founded by Steve Jobs, debuts the NeXT Computer at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, California. The NeXT Computer features a 25MHz Motorola 68030 microprocessor, 8MB RAM, a 250MB optical disk drive, a math co-processor, a digital processor for real time sound, a fax modem, and a seventeen-inch monitor. Although the NeXT will ultimately fail, it introduces several features new to personal computers, including an optical storage disk, a built-in digital signal processor for voice recognition, and object-oriented languages that simplified programming. The system runs version 0.8 of the NEXTSTEP operating system, although a mature release (version 1.0) of the operating system won’t be released for another year. NEXTSTEP is based on Mach 2.5 and BSD (Unix) 4.3, and it features an advanced GUI system based on Postscript. It uses Objective-C as its native programming language and includes the NeXT Interface Builder. Apple’s newest Mac is only half as fast, features no peripherals, and costs US$1,000 more. NeXT Computer Inc. eventually became NeXT Software Inc. before being bought by Apple in 1997. Price: US$6,500 – US$7,769

1992
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Relics” first airs. (No. 604) When the Enterprise investigates a shuttle that crashed on the surface of a Dyson Sphere 75 years ago, they recover the legendary Captain Montgomery Scott (“Scotty”) from the shuttles transporter buffer. Just as Scotty begins to feel just how obsolete he’s become, he and Geordi become the crew’s only hope of survival when the Enterprise is accidentally pulled inside the sphere. The episode will become notable for containing a line of dialog about Jim Kirk that causes a continuity error in the later movie Star Trek Generations. Memory Alpha entry

1993
Touchstone Pictures releases the stop-motion animated feature film The Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick, produced by Tim Burton, and starring the voice talents of Chris Sarandon, Danny Elfman, Catherine O’Hara, William Hickey, Glenn Shadix, and Paul Reubens, to three theaters in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. In it, Jack Skellington of Halloween Town sets out to find something to break the tedium of being The Pumpkin King. He discovers “Christmas Town” and takes it upon himself to take over the duties of Santa to deliver toys across the world to children. Produced on a budget of US$18 million, the film will gross US$191,232 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG) Running Time: 2 hrs 23 mins

1994
Former Olivetti computer engineer Edward Yearley, age 29, of Vicarage Lane, Hemel Hempstead, England downloads the Marks & Spencer’s security file containing pin numbers when he visited a London store to carry out maintenance. In November, he will post the pin numbers to the Gates of the Underworld BBS under the pseudonym “Mr. Ed,” after cracking it. On July 10, 1996, he will be convicted under the Computer Misuse Act 1990 of gaining unauthorized access to computer material and be sentenced to seventy hours of community service and £170 in court costs.

NASA loses radio contact with the Magellan spacecraft as it descends into the thick atmosphere of Venus. Visit the official Magellan website.

1998
Seven domains are hacked and redirected to a defaced website by “the #pascal crew”. Visit the an archived version of the defaced website.

Softquad International begins shipping version 5.0 of the HotMetal Pro web authoring tool.

WinBook introduces the WinBook XL computer, featuring a 233MHz Pentium MMX processor, a 20x CD-ROM drive, a 1.44MB 3.5-inch floppy disk drive, a 256KB Level-2 cache, 16MB RAM, a 12.1-inch dual scan display, a PCI 2MB graphics accelerator, a 1.6GB hard drive, and a touch pad controller. Price: US$999

Yahoo! acquires Yoyodyne Entertainment, Inc., the first Internet-based direct marketer.

1999
Just six days after Barnes and Noble, Inc. announced plans to acquire Babbages, Etc., the company’s shareholders file a suit alleging that the company is wasting assets and ignoring some of its fundamental responsibilities. The suit requests that the Delaware Chancery Court halt the acquisition and create a trust to hold any profits obtained by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Barnes and Noble, Inc.

Sega announces an alliance with Swatch, a Swiss wristwatch manufacturer fashions and the developer of “Internet Time” in 1998. The companies agree to integrate Internet Time into Sega’s world, integrate a Swatch watch reader link into the Dreamcast, and develop unspecified games together.

This is recognized as the day the six billionth living human in the world is born.

2001
Lions Gate Films releases the horror film Dagon, directed by Stuart Gordon and starring Ezra Godden, Francisco Rabal, and Raquel Meroño, is released to US theaters. It is based on H.P. Lovecraft 1932 novella The Shadow Over Innsmouth. In it, A boating accident off the coast of Spain sends Paul and his girlfriend Barbara to the decrepit fishing village of Imboca looking for help. As night falls, people start to disappear and things not quite human start to appear. Paul finds himself pursued by the entire town. Running for his life, he uncovers Imboca’s dark secret: that they pray to Dagon, a monstrous god of the sea. And Dagon’s unholy offspring are freakish half-human creatures on the loose in Imboca… Visit the film’s official website. IMDB listing Running time: 1 hr 38 mins

2002
Hundreds of websites based in Spain take their content offline in protest of a new law that takes effect on this day requiring all commercial websites to register with the government.

2004
Industry analysts release a report revealing that Apple Computer’s iPods account for eighty-two percent of all digital music player sales and ninety-two percent of the sales of all hard drive-based music players. Over two million iPods have been shipped in the prior three months, and over one hundred million song have been sold on iTunes at a rate of roughly four million a week.

2005
Apple Computer introduces the new fifth generation iPod with video playback capabilities. The device is forty percent thinner than the fourth generation iPod and features a larger, brighter screen, gapless playback, re-designed earphones, and a search feature. The fifth generation iPod also features an 80GB capacity, an improvement over the 60GB capacity of the fourth generation.

Apple begins offering short videos, mainly music videos, through its iTunes store. Individual videos cost US$1.99 in the United States and £1.89 in the United Kingdom. Over one million downloads will be sold by the end of the month. Visit the official iTunes website.

The Microsoft Windows Genuine Advantage anti-piracy system is cracked. The simple line of javascript that causes Microsoft’s website to automatically validate the user’s system when entered into a browser spreads rapidly across the Internet.

In San Jose, California, Robert Iger, the Chief Executive Officer of Disney announces the availability of popular ABC and Disney television episodes through Apple Computer’s iTunes store. Certain popular shows will be available for download for just US$1.99 only one day after its initial broadcast.

The second Chinese space flight to carry humans into space, Shenzhou 6, is launched on a five day mission.

2006
Google launches Google for Educators a service that provides teacher with tutorials for Google’s other services, including Blogger and Google Earth.

Microsoft launches Xbox Live Pipeline, a flash-based website that provides access to game downloads, demos, game videos, themes, gamer pictures, and other media content from Xbox Live onto their PC. In 2007, the Xbox Live website will become accessible via computer and the Pipeline website will be discontinued.