The Great Geek Manual

1842
In New York Harbor, inventor Samuel Morse lays the world’s first telegraph cable, across the length of a mile between the Battery and Governor’s Island. Unfortunately, before his system could be fully demonstrated, a passing ship pulls up the cable.

1871
English engineer and mathematician Charles Babbage, inventor of the Difference Engine, dies. At the time of his death, he is living in poverty after years of having funded his own projects after the government stopped funding them.

1878
Thomas Edison makes electricity available to private households for the first time.

1879
Thomas Edison manufactures the first incandescent light bulb.

1892
The first long-distance telephone line is established between the offices of the mayor of Chicago and the mayor of New York City.

1922
The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) is founded by a consortium of six radio manufacturing companies under a government license as the sole British radio operator. Five years later it will receive a Royal Charter and become the British Broadcasting Corporation. John Reith, the BBC’s founding father, feared that Britain’s broadcasting system would follow in the footsteps of America’s unregulated, commercial radio or the Soviet Union’s rigidly controlled state system of radio. Reith’s goal is to create an independent broadcaster free of political and commercial pressure. More than one million ten shilling (50p) licenses will be issued by November 14, 1922 when daily transmissions will begin.

1928
The Kodacolor three-color additive lenticular process is demonstrated to the Royal Photographic Society of London by Eastman Kodak.

1931
US inventor Thomas Edison, one of the most prolific inventors in history, dies. He will be remembered as the most prolific inventor in US history, having registered 1,093 US patents over the course of his lifetime.

1945
The USSR obtains the plans for the United States’ plutonium bomb from Klaus Fuchs, a German-born theoretical physicist turned spy employed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory

1954
Texas Instruments (TI) announces the first transistor radio, the Regency TR-1. US$49.95

1955
The existence of the “negative proton,” otherwise known as an “antiproton” is discovered at the University of California, Berkeley. The search for the antimatter subparticle bean in 1932, when the existence of the positron, a particle with the mass of an electron despite a positive charge, was discovered. It took nearly thirteen years to discover the antiproton because its creation involved two thousand times the energy, requiring a much larger “atom smasher” than existed before the Bevatron was built at UC Berkeley. The subparticles were detected when copper was bombarded with protons accelerated to 6.2 billion electron volts of energy, creating of sixty antiprotons.

1958
William Higinbotham introduces the world’s first video game, Tennis for Two. While technically, there were earlier electronic games, Tennis for Two is the first game to feature a graphical display, which is fundamental to the definition of the term “video game.” Higinbotham built the tennis simulator to entertain visitors of the Brookhaven National Laboratory, and, in fact, would only bring the unit out on the laboratory’s two “Visitor Days.” It would only become known outside the lab after Higinbotham testified in the patent disputes of Magnavox and Ralph Baer. Read more at the official Brookhaven National Laboratory website.

1962
Dr. James D. Watson, Dr. Francis Crick, and Dr. Maurice Wilkins of Britain win the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology for their work in determining the double-helix molecular structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).

1967
The Soviet Venera 4 space probe enters the atmosphere of the planet Venus and transmits data back to Earth before losing contact twenty-seven kilometers above the surface.

1968
The Star Trek episode “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” first airs. (No. 62) In it, the Enterprise travels with an alien ambassador who must travel inside a special black case because his appearance causes insanity. Memory Alpha entry

1985
Nintendo releases the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in New York. The system is an immediate success and Nintendo launches the game nationwide in February 1986. The NES comes with the Robotic Operating Buddy (R.O.B.) and the Zapper light gun. Eighteen games are available at the launch of the game system, two of which (Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros.) come bundled with the system. The marketing slogan for the NES in North America is “Now You’re Playing With Power!” Price: US$125

Nintendo releases eighteen games for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) at the time of the release of the system in the US, including: 10-Yard Fight, Baseball, Clu Clu Land, Donkey Kong Jr. Math, Duck Hunt, Excitebike, Golf, Gyromite, Hogan’s Alley, Ice Climber, Kung Fu, Mach Rider, Pinball, Stack-Up, Tennis, Wild Gunman, Wrecking Crew, and Super Mario Bros..

1989
The Space Shuttle Atlantis releases the Galileo space orbiter. The orbiter’s inertial upper stage rocket then pushes it onto a course through the inner solar system, which will carry it past Venus before it heads outward to Jupiter. It will become the first space probe to conduct an asteroid flyby, and it will be responsible for discovering the first asteroid moon before becoming the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter. Visit the Galileo home page.

Version 3.000 of the Perl programming language is released. Visit the official Perl website.

1993
The Digital Equipment Corporation announces its MicroVAX system at a press conference in Marlboro, Massachusetts. MicroVAX is a desktop version of the Digital VAX server, featuring a quad-sized 32-bit processor board with a MicroVAX chip, the MicroVMS or ULTRIX operating system, a floating-point co-processor chip, 1MB of on-board memory, and a Q22-bus interface.

The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Gambit” (Part 2) first airs. (No. 705) In it, Picard and Riker help mercenaries collect archaeological artifacts to prevent an ancient Vulcan weapon from falling into the wrong hands. Memory Alpha entry

1994
Version 5.000 of the Perl programming language is released. Visit the official Perl website.

1996
Apple Computer introduces the Apple Performa 6360 CD computer, featuring a 160 MHz PowerPC 603e processor, a 8X CD-ROM drive, a 28.8 kbps modem, 1MB video RAM, 16MB RAM, a 1.2GB Quantum IDE hard drive, one PCI slot, and over twenty-four applications. Price: US$1,499

Apple Computer introduces the Performa 6400/200 “Video Editing Edition,” featuring a 200MHz PowerPC 603e processor, 32MB RAM, a 2.4GB hard drive, 1MB video RAM, a 28.8kbps modem, an 8X CD-ROM drive, a 256KB level-2 cache, Avid Cinema video editing software, and over twenty-four applications. Price: US$2,699

1999
International Business Machines (IBM) releases the latest in cutting edge hard drive technology, the 10,000 RPM Ultrastar 72ZX. The line of drives is the world’s highest capacity drive at 73GB. The family of record-breaking hard drives feature a new technology that protects drives against temperature variation and vibration.

Steven Jobs is featured on the cover of Time magazine. The issue profiles him in an article entitled “Steve’s Two Jobs,” in which Jobs talks about his two companies, Apple Computer and Pixar.

2002
The CBS television network airs an episode of the 48 Hours investigative news series featuring an over-blown investigation into the dangers of online gaming, particularly EverQuest. The report drastically dramatizes the games as being highly addictive, fraught with online predators, and psychologically dangerous. After being aired, the program’s report be widely ridiculed on the internet.

2004
The science fiction television series Battlestar Galactica premieres in the UK with the episode “33.” In it, mankind flees from the Colonies, but the fleet is attacked by the Cylons every 33 minutes as the survivors cope with their losses and struggle with sleep deprivation. The series will run for sixty-three episodes over four seasons. Battlestar Wiki entry

2005
Vivendi Universal releases the first-person shooter (FPS) F.E.A.R. for Windows, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in Europe and the U.S. The game will be very well received by critics and gamers alike. PC Gamer will declare that it is “the first game to convincingly channel the kinetic exhilaration of ‘John Woo violence‘ in the FPS format.” F.E.A.R. is an acronym for First Encounter Assault Recon, the tactical team that the game follows. Visit the game’s official website. BBFC: 18 ESRB: M (Mature) PEGI: 18+

2006
Microsoft releases version 7.0 of its Internet Explorer web browser for Windows Vista. It’s the first major update to the browser in more than 5 years, and it introduces a number of significant improvements to the applications, including a feed reader, an integrated search box,, page zooming, tabbed browsing, and improved web standards support. Visit the official Internet Explorer website.

Vidalinux Desktop Project releases version 1.3 of the VidaLinux Linux distribution. Visit the distribution’s official website.

2008
NASA launches the Interstellar Boundary Explorer on a mission to map the edge of solar system.