The Great Geek Manual

1690
“Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick,” the first newspaper to appear in the Americas, is published for the first and only time before being suppressed by the government.

1818
The first blood transfusion involving human blood, rather than animal blood, takes place at Guy’s Hospital in London, England.

1820
Francois Arago announces that a copper wire between the poles of a voltaic cell, could laterally attract iron filings to itself. The discovery comes just months after Hans Christian Ørsted discovered that a wire charged with an electric current could deflect a neighboring compass needle from magnetic north. In the same publication, Arago describes how he caused permanent magnetism in steel needles by laying them at a right angle to a charged copper wire.

1928
The Galvin Manufacturing Corporation is founded and will later be known as Motorola.

1956
The inaugural call is made over the TAT-1, the world’s first transatlantic telephone cable system, which runs between Clarenville, Newfoundland and Oban, Scotland. Previous cables had been limited to telegraph transmissions, but the TAT-1 allows thirty-five simultaneous telephone calls. The call is made by AT&T“>AT&T chairman Craig, who calls British Postmaster General Dr. Charles Hill. In the first twenty-four hours of public service, there will be 588 calls made between London and the US and 119 calls made between London and Canada.

1984
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) makes a major announcement of thirty-one software releases for its personal computers. The releases include two series of programs, the IBM Business Management Series, for US$695 each, and the IBM Personal Decision Series, for US$150-250 each.

1987
20th Century Fox releases the fantasy film The Princess Bride, directed by Rob Reiner and starring Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Chris Sarandon, Christopher Guest, Wallace Shawn, André the Giant, Robin Wright, Peter Falk, Billy Crystal, Carol Kane, and Fred Savage to nine US theaters. It is based on the 1973 novel of the same title by William Goldman. The film will gross US$206,243 domestically in its opening weekend, and it will be released to 622 theaters in a wider release on October 9. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG) Running Time: 1 hrs 38 min

Cray releases version 3.0 of the Unicos operating system.

1989
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) announces plans to develop a new design for transmitting information within a computer, called Micro Channel Architecture, which the company believes could transfer data at 160 million bytes per second or eight times faster than the fastest alternative. Although IBM is hoping to make its system the industry standard, manufacturers of IBM-compatible computers will largely chose other methods.

1993
First Portuguese satellite, Posat, is launched.

1995
The first batch of Memory Track cartridges ship from Atari’s warehouse. Memory Track enables Jaguar CD-ROM users to store and retrieve high scores and game settings of CD-based software.

Sun Microsystems announces an expanded alliance with Toshiba and a joint project to develop remote information retrieval products which incorporate Java.

1996
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) launches OS/2 Warp 4, in San Francisco, California. This version includes several new features, including Java technology, voice recognition software, and Open32 Win32 APIs. It is the first operating system to include built-in speech navigation and recognition. Price: US$249 or US$149 (Upgrade)

Kevin Mitnick is indicted for damaging computers at the University of South Carolina (USC) and compiling numerous electronic files containing stolen passwords. Mitnick is also charged with fourteen counts of wire fraud, arising from his alleged theft of proprietary software from manufacturers.

Microsoft releases version 3.0 of DirectX to software developers. This version includes support for 3D positional sound, multimedia, multiplayer online games, and several more input devices.

The Star Trek: Voyager episode “The Swarm” first airs. (No. 304) In it, the Doctor begins encountering symptoms resembling Alzheimer’s after the ship encounters a swarm of alien vessels. The episode is the first in the series to exclusively use Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) effects, rather than the franchise’s signature model work. The transition makes the series Paramount’s first television property (as well as the first Star Trek series) to go fully CGI. The effect are provided by Foundation Imaging, the same company behind the special effects of Babylon 5. Deep Space Nine will begin using CGI exclusively one year later, after the success of Voyager. Memory Alpha entry

1997
The Windows NT server of the Florida State School of Criminalogy is hacked.

Electronic Arts launches Ultima Online, which will become the first successful massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), for Windows. Its success will pave the way for the explosive popularity of the MMORPG genre. Visit the game’s official website.

1998
National Semiconductor announces that it will terminate its processor manufacturing agreement with IBM by the end of the year. As a result, IBM will lose access to Cyrix 6X86 designs, compatible with Intel x86 processors.

2000
Intel releases 800 and 850MHz mobile Pentium III processors. Price: US$508 and US$722 each in 1000-unit quantities

Intel releases the 700 MHz mobile Celeron processor, featuring 128KB Level-2 Cahche and a 100MHz Front Side Bus. Price: US$181 each in 1000-unit quantities

Version 7.0 of the Red Hat Linux operating system is released. Visit the game’s official website.

2003
Nintendo of America reduces the price of the GameCube in North America to US$99.

2008
China launched the Shenzhou 7 space mission. It is the Chinese space program’s third human spaceflight and the program’s first mission to include extra-vehicular activity (EVA).