The Great Geek Manual

1616
The first free public school in Europe to allow non-aristocrats to attend opens in Frascati, Italy.

1835
Charles Darwin reaches the Galápagos Islands aboard the HMS Beagle.

1910
Cosmic radiation is first suggested as the subject of a paper published in Physikalische Zeitchrift by amateur physicist Theodor Wulf. He reports the results of four days of observations he made the previous Spring from the top of the Eiffel Tower. He suggests that the Earth is under constant bombardment from radiation from outer space, from sources other than the Sun.

1916
The first tanks, the British D1 tanks, are used for the first time in history at the Battle of the Somme, during World War I.

1928
A.H. Renfell and Captain Rickards demonstrate the first robot manufactured in Britain at the Model Engineering Exhibition in London, England.

The Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System (MUMPS) programming language, also known simply as “M” is approved as an ANSI standard. The programming language was created for use in the healthcare industry to make writing database-driven applications easy while efficiently using computer resources.

1946
The BBC televises its first religious service.

1947
RCA releases the 12AX7 vacuum tube, a miniature dual triode vacuum tube with high voltage gain.

What will one day become the world’s oldest computing society, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), is founded. The ACM organizes conference and educational workshops to exchange information on technology. Visit the organization’s official website.

1959
Regular television broadcasts begin for the first time in India.

1966
The Star Trek episode “Charlie X” first airs. (No. 2) In it, the Enterprise picks up an unstable teenage boy with dangerous mental powers. Memory Alpha entry

1967
The Star Trek episode “Amok Time” first airs. (No. 30) In the episode, Kirk and Spock are pitted in a fight to the death against each other by Spock’s wife-to-be when Spock suffers his first pon farr. The episode, which was written by science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, is the first in which Spock uses either the phrase “live long and prosper” and makes the “Vulcan salute” gesture for the first time. The gesture was suggested by actor Lenard Nimoy, and it was inspired by Nimoy’s jewish heritage. It resembles a gesture used in benedictions during Jewish services to symbolize the letter Shin, the first letter in the name Shaddai, God’s name in Hebrew. Memory Alpha entry Watch a video interview with Nimoy at YouTube.

1968
The Soviet Zond 5 spaceship is launched. It will become the first spacecraft to fly around the Moon and then re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere.

1973
Star Trek: The Animated Series episode “Yesteryear” first airs. (No. 102) The episode is intended to be a sequel to the popular Star Trek episode The City on the Edge of Forever. In it, Spock returns from a time-traveling research project he has been conducting with the use of the Guardian of Forever. When he emerges from the portal, he discovers no one onboard the Enterprise remembers him and that an Andorian officer, Commander Thelin has essentially replaced him. Memory Alpha entry

1975
Micro-Soft is founded by high schoolers Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who write programs for the MITS Altair 8800. In November 1976, the company name will be officially registered as Microsoft.

1978
During the Muhammad Ali – Leon Spinks World Heavyweight Championship bout, Atari, Inc. kicks off a six million dollar advertising campaign, which cost more than the entire video game industry combined spent on advertising in 1977. The campaign includes three thirty-second spots featuring stars like Carol Channing, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Billie Jean King, Jack Palance, Pelé, Gene Rayburn, Bobby Riggs, and Pete Rose. The theme, Don’t Watch TV Tonight, Play It, will be seen by viewers of programs such as Battle Star Galactica, Midnight Special, NCAA Football, NFL Monday Night Football, Sunday Big Event and others. In addition, full-page magazine ads will appear in People, Penthouse, Playboy, Sport, TV Guide, and Us. It is estimated that the campaign will reach 95% of United States households, with more than one billion impressions during the holiday selling season.

1982
Texas Instruments and International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) enter into a joint agreement under which Texas Instruments will produce chips for cards for networking office machines with computers.

1984
The science fiction television series The Tripods premieres on the BBC with the episode “A Village in England: July, 2089 AD”. The series is an adaptation of the first two books in the Tripod trilogy by John Christopher, The White Mountains and The City of Gold and Lead. The series will run for two seasons and a total of twenty-five thirty-minute episodes. It is one of the longest adaptations ever produced for British television, matched only by the series War and Peace. At the time of its production, such an enormous investment in a “telefantasy” was unheard of, and the final result was highly controversial. Many fans of the original novels praised the series for its above-par acting, elaborate costumes, extensive location work, and ground-breaking special effects, as well as for remaining so true to the first novel, though they did embellish on the plot of the second novel in order to bring the story to a swifter close. However, its broadcast did not receive high ratings, and the series was canceled before the third book could be shot. TV.com entry

1986
Apple Computer introduces the Apple IIGS computer, featuring a 1 or 2.8MHz 16-bit Western Design Center processor. The “GS” stands for Graphics and Sound. It is partially compatible with Apple II software. Price: US$1,000 – US$1,900

1987
Release 47 of the Infocom interactive fiction game Beyond Zork is published for personal computers. It is one of the last games in the Zork series published by Infocom. Later titles would be published by Activision after Infocom’s acquisition. It signifies a notable departure from the standard format of Infocom’s earlier games which relied purely on text and puzzle-solving. Beyond Zork is the first game in the Zork franchise and one of the first Infocom games to incorporate a crude on-screen map, the use of character statistics, levels, and RPG combat elements. It is Infocom’s twenty-ninth game.

1989
The animated series The Legend of Zelda premieres on the ABC network with the episode “The Ringer.” The games are based on the first and second Legend of Zelda games. In the series, Link and the royal Princess Zelda defend the kingdom of Hyrule from an evil wizard named Ganon. Most episodes consisted of Ganon and his minions attempting to capture the Triforce of Wisdom from Zelda or kidnap Zelda herself. The episode will run for one season of thirteen episodes. TV.com entry

Tor Books publishes the fantasy novel The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan as a hardcover. (ISBN 0-312-85248-7) It is the third book in the Wheel of Times series. Visit the author’s official website. Length: 624 pages

1992
Tor Books publishes the fantasy novel The Shadow Rising by Robert Jordan as a hardcover. (ISBN-10: 0312854315) It is the fourth book in the Wheel of Times series. Visit the author’s official website. Length: 704 pages

1995
The Intel Corporation announces a new US$100 million manufacturing and complex in Du Pont, Washington. A second phase will cost hundreds of millions. Ground breaking is scheduled prior to October 31 and the facility will employ 1,200 people by the end of 1996.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer releases the film Hackers, directed by Iain Softley and starring Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, Jesse Bradford, Matthew Lillard, Renoly Santiago, and Laurence Mason, to US theaters. In it, a boy who was arrested by the US Secret Service for writing a computer virus when he was younger discovers a plot to unleash a dangerous computer virus, and he and his friends must use their computer skills to uncover evidence while being pursued by the Secret Service and the evil computer genius behind the virus. Several Apple Computer products appear throughout the film, along with several other personal computers that are used to control television programming, a supercomputer, traffic lights, building lights, and more. The film will be widely criticized for its wildly inaccurate portrayal of computing, cracking, hacking, and programming. Produced on a a relatively small budget, the film will gross US$3,173,101 in its opening weekend. Visit the film’s official website. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 1 hrs 47 min

The Wall Street Journal reports that American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) is planning to layoff ten thousand workers as it shuts down its personal computer subsidiary, American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) Global Information Solutions.

1997
Apple Computer announces several Power Macintosh 6500 systems with 275 to 300 MHz PowerPC 603e processors, and the Mac OS 8 operating system.

Hackers deface the Coca-cola website with a picture of a Coke bottle that reads “ADM Crew,” with words next to it that read, “break me.” The website is subsequently replaced with a message reading, “Hi! The Coca-Cola Company’s Internet Web servers are temporarily down for maintenance. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Please visit us again very soon.”

Larry Page and Sergey Brin register the domain Google.com eight days after having incorporated Google, Inc. on US$1.1 million in capital in a garage in Menlo Park, California.

1998
The Rings of Jupiter are declared to be made of dust from the impacts of cosmic bodies that have crashed into Jupiter’s moons. The idea comes from studies of the rings made by scientists at several institutions.

Microsoft releases Office 97 Service Pack 2.

The premiere (fall) issue of Classic Gamer Magazine is published. The thirty-eight page edition features a color cover and articles about the most prominent classic video game and computer systems including Atari, Coleco, Intellivision, Vectrex and others. Chris Cavanaugh is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief.

With the merger between WorldCom and MCI Communications complete, MCI WorldCom, which will later be renamed WorldCom, opens for business. In 2003 the company will become the largest bankruptcy case in United States history in a prime example of the waste of excesses of the dot.com bubble.

1999
Intel introduces the Intel Mobile Celeron processor, operating at 433 and 466MHz, featuring 128KB Level-2 Caches, 66MHz Front-Side Buses, and 18.9 million transistors. They are based on a 0.25 micron process and are intended for use in low-cost mobile computers.

Motorola announces plans to acquire General Instrument Corporation (GI), an electronics manufacturer, for US$11 billion.

Microsoft announces that it will acquire the Visio Corporation, a developer of technical drawing applications, for US$1.3 billion in stock.

The websites of the American Stock Exchange and Nasdaq are defaced by “The United Loan Gunman”. Some media sources believe that this new hacking group is actually the notorious “Hacking for Girlies” (HFG) group which had earlier defaced the website of The New York Times.

2000
A human error which allowed a hacker to access the credit and debit card information of about 15,700 customers from the website of Western Union, a subsidiary of First Data, is discovered. The vulnerability was created when “performance management files” were left open on the site during routine maintenance. Over the coming weekend, the company’s website will be replaced with an out-of-service message.

2001
The Vintage Computer Festival 5.0 is held September 15 – 16 at the Parkside Hall of the San Jose Convention Center in San Jose, California. Visit the event’s official website.

2003
Carnegie Mellon University and The Department of Homeland Security announce the creation of the US Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT) to address national computer security issues.

VeriSign deploys a wildcard service into the .com and .net top level domains (TLDs) causing confusion as URLs with invalid domains are redirected to a VeriSign page. ICANN will order VeriSign to stop the service, and the company will comply with the order on October 4.

2004
Version 0.7 of Desktop Light Linux (DeLi Linux) is released. DeLi is particularly optimized to run on older personal computers. DeLi Linux requires only a 386 processor with 8MB RAM. However, it works best with a 486 and 16MB RAM. A full installation with the full package installed requires nearly 400MB of hard disk space. Visit the system’s official website.

2006
Sony releases the mylo Personal Communicator, a portable instant messaging and internet communications device. The brand name “mylo” stands for My Life Online. Using Wi-Fi instead of cellular networks, the mylo targets consumers in the 18-24 age group.

Sun Microsystems Game Technology Group releases version 1.0.0 of the Java OpenGL (JOGL) wrapper library, which allows most features available in the C programming language to be used with the Java programming language through the use of OpenGL. Visit the library’s official website.

The United Paramount Network (UPN), the network that aired the series Star Trek: Enterprise, ceases operations after eleven and a half years. The CW Television Network launched three days later.

2007
Seven hundred megabytes worth of email from MediaDefender is very publicly leaked to the internet. MediaDefender is a independent company that finds and monitors peer-to-peer distribution networks that illegally trade in copyrighted material for the MPAA and RIAA. The company has made itself notorious among the internet community in recent months with its allegedly unscrupulous tactics. The thousands of email messages leaked contain sensitive data on the company’s internal workings, including the tactics it uses to snare filesharers. Among the most controversial of the tactics is a phony filesharing site “MiiVii.com,” which the company set up for the soul purpose of luring users into uploading files that violate copyright. Other revelations include the fact that the company has repeatedly been responsible for leaking new releases to public bittorrent trackers. Read more at TorrentFreak.com.