The Great Geek Manual

1675
German mathematician Leibniz introduces the long s (∫) to denote an integral in calculus equations.

1878
Willigot T. Odhner is granted a patent for a calculating machine that performs multiplications using repeated additions. The patent is a modified and compact version of the Gottfried von Leibniz stepped wheel.

1945
The first mass-produced ballpoint pen available in the U.S., the Reynolds’ Rocket pen, goes on sale at Gimbels Department Stores in New York for US$12.95 almost fifty-seven years to the day after the first U.S. patent for a ballpoint pen was granted . The item is an immediate success, selling US$100,000 worth in the first day on the market alone. The design is that of Laszlo Biró, discovered by Chicago businessman Milton Reynolds, while in Buenos Aires on unrelated business. He saw the Biro pen in a store and recognized the pen’s sales potential. He brought samples of the product back to America and, ignoring the patent rights of the Argentine manufacturer, the Eversharp Company, he began manufacturing the product four months later. The pens are extremely unreliable but incredibly popular. By 1948, the price of ink pens will drop to less than fifty cents, and Reynolds’ company will fail in 1951.

1956
The first hard disk drive is created at International Business Machines (IBM) by a team lead by Reynold B. Johnson. The IBM 305 RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control) holds 5MB of data on fifty 24-inch disks which spin at 1,200 rpm in a case roughly the size of two refrigerators for at a price of about US$10,000 per megabyte. IBM leased the computers for US$3,200 per month.

1969
At 10:30pm, the first computer-to-computer connection in history is established over a 50kbps AT&T phone line between a SDS Sigma 7 operated by a team under Professor Leonard Kleinrock at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and an SDS 940 operated by a team under Douglas Englebart at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), marking the birth of ARPANET, the first wide area (long distance) packet switching network and the precursor to the later Internet. Both computers are connected to the phone line through an Interface Message Processor (IMP). In his autobiography, The Birth of the Internet, Leonard Kleinrock will later describe the initial connection. “At the UCLA end, they typed in the ‘l’ and asked SRI if they received it; ‘got the l’ came the voice reply. UCLA typed in the ‘o’, asked if they got it, and received ‘got the o’. UCLA then typed in the ‘g’ and the darned system CRASHED! Quite a beginning. On the second attempt, it worked fine!” In a 2004 interview he’ll joke that, “Morse and Bell were a hell of a lot smarter than we were. They knew they were doing something of historical importance. We were just engineers, trying to do a good job.” Just weeks earlier, on September 2nd, the first node of the network was established by Leonard Kleinrock when he successfully established a connection between UCLA’s IMP and its SDS Sigma-7 mainframe.

1981
The Amusement Machine Operators of America (AMOA) Show is held Thursday, October 29 through Saturday, October 31 at the Conrad Hilton Hotel in Chicago, Illinois. The Atari exhibit features Asteroids, Centipede, and Tempest.

1983
In the October 29, 1983 issue of the New York Times Andrew Pollack writes a multi-page article entitled “Retreat set by Texas Instruments,” in which he details the withdrawal of Texas Instruments from the personal computer market and the demise of the TI 99/4A. Read the article online.

1988
Sega releases the ground-breaking Mega Drive video game console in Japan, featuring a 32-bit Motorola 68000 CPU “crippled” by a 16-bit bus, 64KB RAM, 2KB ROM, and a Zilog Z80 sound processor. The fourth-generation console will be on the market for two years before the the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) is released, and it will pioneer console hardware and marketing conventions that will remain in use for decades to come. The Mega Drive will sell over twenty-nine million units across an unmatched fourteen-year lifespan.

1990
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Legacy” first airs. (No. 406) In it, Tasha Yar’s sister Ishara seeks to restore order on their conflict-ridden colony world. Memory Alpha entry

1991
The space probe Galileo passes within 997 miles (1,604km) at a speed of 5 mi/sec (8 km/sec) of Gaspra, becoming the first human object to fly past an asteroid. Gaspra is about 20km long and orbits the Sun in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. During the pass, the probe takes the first close-up photographs of an asteroid, which, due to a communications system failure, are returned to Earth at a speed of only 40 bits/sec.

1993
The Council of the European Communities signs a directive to increase the term of a copyright’s protection to seventy years past the author’s death, an increase of twenty years for most countries.

1996
MatriDigm Corporation files for three patents on technology to reconfigure corporate based computers for post year 2000 dating.

Maxtor Corporation announces the DiamondMax line of hard drives, featuring capacities of 5.1GB. Visit the company’s official website.

Sun Microsystems launches Java Enterprise Computing and announces JavaStation network computers.

William Henry Gates III and his colleague, Steven Ballmer, donate US$20 million to Harvard University for the purpose of building a computer sciences center. Twenty years prior, Gates dropped out of Harvard to found Microsoft. The name of the new facility will be “Maxwell Dworkin” in the honor of Beatrice Dworkin Ballmer and Mary Maxwell Gates, the donors’ mothers.

1998
International Business Machines (IBM) introduces the Aptiva personal computer, featuring a IBM 300 Performance MMX processor, 32MB RAM, a 3.2GB hard drive, a 24x CD-ROM drive, a modem, and the Lotus SmartSuite. IBM is the first major American computer maker to release a computer for less than US$600. Price: US$599

U.S. astronaut John Glenn, age 77, is launched into space aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. (STS-95) Glenn first made history in 1962 as the first American to orbit the Earth. Now, as a member of the Discovery crew, he serves as a Payload Specialist, carrying out studies on the commonalities between the effects of space flight and aging. The mission will end nine days later on November 7, 1998, after 134 orbits, traveling 3.6 million miles in 213 hours and 44 minutes. His original flight only lasted four about five hours. During the launch of the mission, the ATSC HDTV broadcasting standard is inaugurated and Pedro Duque becomes first Spaniard in space.

The Wall Street Journal reports that a software “glitch” related to the implementation of a new mutual-fund system at the NASDAQ stock exchange is causing incorrect information to be released related to daily changes in some mutual funds’ net asset values.

1999
Brad Silverberg leaves Microsoft, after nine years. He served as vice president for the applications and the Internet client group. He also headed the team responsible for Windows 3.1 and Internet Explorer.

Miramax releases the anime film Princess Mononoke, directed by Hayao Miyazaki and featuring the voice talents of Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Minnie Driver, and Billy Bob Thornton, to 8 U.S. theaters. Produced on a budget of ¥2.35 billion, it will gross US$144,446 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 2 hrs 15 mins

2001
SNK Playmore of Japan, best known for producing NeoGeo arcade and home games, shuts down.

2002
Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard officially unveils the Media Center PC, featuring the Windows XP Media Center Edition operating system and digital video recorder.

2003
Lenslet, an Israeli start-up, announces the successful development of a processor that uses optics rather than silicon, in order to compute at the speed of light.

The Star Trek: Enterprise episode “The Shipment” first airs. (No. 307) In it, the Enterprise discovers a Xindi mining outpost where components of the Xindi superweapon are being assembled. Memory Alpha entry

2007
African leaders and industry leaders meet in Rwanda to discuss plans to boost the continent’s development by securing universal Internet access by 2012.

2008
Venezuela launches its first satellite from Sichuan, China.

Version 4.5.2 of the Tribler peer-to-peer bittorrent client is released by researchers from several European universities and Harvard. Through the BuddyCast protocol, this version is the first bittorrent client to incorporate a decentralized torrent search feature so that users can find torrent files without relying on centralized sites like Mininova or The Pirate Bay. Such a search feature holds the potential to make public bittorrent sites no longer necessary. Visit the official Tribler website.

2009
India bans pre-paid mobile telephones in Kashmir over fears that terrorists could use them to trigger bombs while hiding their identities.

A San Jose District judge awards Facebook US$711 million in damages in an anti-spam case filed against Sanford Wallace, known as the “Spam King.” Though Wallace will file for bankruptcy in June, the judge will also recommended criminal contempt charges against Wallace, which carry the possibility of incarceration.