The Great Geek Manual

1927
Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) goes on the air, with forty-seven radio stations. The radio network will lose a substantial amount of money in its first year, and on January 18, 1929, Columbia Records will sell the network to a group of private investors headed by William S. Paley, a Philadelphia cigar manufacturer, for four hundred thousand dollars.

1947
National Security Act goes into effect. The act, in part, creates the Central Intelligence Agency, the country’s first peacetime intelligence agency.

1948
BBC Television transmits the first documentary film made especially for television, Robert Barr’s Germany Under Control.

Columbia Records publishes the first catalog of Long Playing (LP) record releases.

1959
The Department of the Navy launches Vanguard 3 into Earth orbit.

1964
The comedy series The Addams Family premieres on the ABC network with the episode “The Addams Family Goes to School.” It is based on the characters in Charles Addams’ New Yorker cartoons. It will run for two seasons, for a total of sixty-four episodes. TV.com episode

1974
The British government officially approves a two-year trial of the BBC’s Ceefax and ITV’s Oracle teletext systems. Ceefax, an interactive data service carried through cable television, is one of the forerunners of the internet.

1977
The robotic space probe Voyager I takes the first photograph of Earth and the Moon together in space. Read more at NASA’s website.

1980
Soyuz 38 carries two cosmonauts to the Salyut 6 space station. One of the two cosmonaut, Cuban Arnaldo Tamayo-Mendez, becomes the first person of color and the first Latin American sent into space.

1984
Software Arts, founded by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston, and VisiCorp, one of the earliest software publishers, settle their lawsuit over VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet application. The sixty million dollar lawsuit was originally filed by VisiCorp, which had taken over distributing and marketing VisiCalc, against Software Arts, which had initially developed the product, alleging that Software Arts had failed to upgrade the product to maintain its competitive edge. Software Arts filed a countersuit alleging that VisiCorp had failed to market the product effectively. The terms of the settlement are never disclosed to the public.

1986
Motorola announces the Motorola 68030 microprocessor. It incorporates about three hundred thousand transistors.

1987
Hacker access AT&T computers, stealing one million dollars worth of software.

Microsoft stock splits for the first time.

1989
NeXT releases version 1.0 of the NeXTstep OS. It is a Unix operating system based on the Mach kernel, featuring some source code from BSD Unix. It will eventually be bought by Apple and used in its next generation OS, Rhapsody.

The science fiction television series Alien Nation premieres on the FOX network in the US with the episode “Pilot.” In it, resentment toward the Tenctonese Newcomers builds, and partners Matt Sikes and George Francisco investigate a string of murders that appears to be the work of a giant, insect-like creature. The series is based on the movie of the same name. It is one of Fox’s first dramatic series, and it will develop a large fan base. However, due to the fledgling network’s financial difficulties, it will only run for one season of twenty-two episodes. IMDB listing

1990
NeXT releases the NeXTstation, a high-end workstation computer, one year after the introduction of the NeXTstep OS, featuring version 2.0 of the OS. The system features a 25MHz or 33MHz Motorola 68040 processor, an FPU Motorola 68882 math co-processor, the new 25MHz ‘40, 2.88MB floppy drive, a 105MB hard drive, 8MB RAM, and a monochrome monitor. Read more at Old-computers.com. Visit the system’s official website. Price: US$4,995

NeXT releases the NeXTcube with the same configuration as a NeXTstation Color that it is compatible with a 32-bit video board that will allow it to display 16.7 million colors in Adobe’s Display Postscript. Price: US$7,995

NeXT releases the NeXTstation Color with a sixteen monitor capable of 4,096 colors, and 12MB RAM. Price: US$7,995

1993
The animated television series Sonic the Hedgehog premieres on the ABC network in the US as a Saturday morning cartoon with the episode “Heads or Tails”. It is based on the video game franchise of the same name. In it, Sonic and Tails race to Robotropolis in search of metal cotter pins in order to ward off an impending invasion by Robotnik’s Buzzbombers. It will run for two seasons for a total of twenty-six episodes.

1995
Version 2.0 of the Netscape Communications web browser is released. This version features support for Java applets and a full mail reader called Netscape Mail, transforming Netscape into an Internet suite for the first time. Both the browser and the suite will be known as Netscape Navigator. AOL will soon begin bundling their software with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer to compete. Visit the application’s official website.

1998
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is formed as a California non-profit corporation to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly on behalf of the US Government. Visit the organization’s official website.

Microsoft announces that 1.5 million upgrades of Windows ‘98 have been sold since it was released Thursday, June 25. To date, Microsoft owns eighty-five percent of the market for Personal Computer (PC) operating systems.

2001
The NIMDA computer worm first begins to infect computers across the internet, spreading though emails to systems running Windows 2000 and infecting websites by attacking Microsoft IIS network servers. It’s combination of attacks makes it one of the quickest spreading worms yet observed, largely because no users are involved in its transmission. NIMDA will ultimately be estimated to have caused about US$500 million in damages to corporate networks and other security services.

Sony announces the Clie PEG N760C handheld computer, featuring the 33MHz Dragonball VZ, a built-in digital audio player, the Palm OS 4.1, and a 65,536-color display. The unit will be available in October, replacing the Clie PEG N710C. Price: US$500

2002
Intel releases the 2000MHz Celeron 2.0 processor, featuring a 128 Level-2 Cache and a 400MHz Front Side Bus for the low-end consumer market.

The Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Shockwave, Part II” first airs. (No. 201) In it, a group of Suliban take over Enterprise, while Archer tries to return to the 22nd century. Memory Alpha entry

2003
Email users are swamped by a new fast-spreading computer virus circulating through email that purports to be security software offered by a Microsoft advisory, but it actually tries to disable security programs that are already running. The worm, dubbed “Swen” or “Gibe,” takes advantage of a two-year-old hole in Internet Explorer and affects systems that have not installed a patch for that security hole.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sues the iMesh filesharing social network for copyright infringement. The two parties will settle on July 20, 2004. According to the RIAA, the terms of the settlement were that iMesh would pay them US$4.1 million and would migrate to a pay service. Visit the official iMesh website.

2007
The purchase of Club NEVERDIE by Jon NEVERDIE Jacobs for US$100,000 inside the Entropia Universe is entered into the 2008 Guinness World Records book for the “Most Expensive Virtual World Object.” Read more at MarketWire. Visit Jon Jacobs’ personal website.