This Day in Geek History: April 30 Happy Bday Johnny Galecki … geekiness is good 1006 SuperNova 1006Supernova SN 1006, the brightest supernova in recorded history, occurs in the southern constellation Lupus, near the star Beta Lupi. Chinese and Arabic astronomers note the supernova, but the speed of the still-expanding shock wave won’t be measured for nearly a millennium. The event is also recorded by observers in Egypt, Iraq, Italy, Japan, and Switzerland. From the careful descriptions recorded by Chinese astronomers of how the light varies, the Supernova is apparently yellow in color and visible for over a year. 1665 The Great Plague of LondonSamuel Pepys makes his first diary reference to the Great Plague in London. “Great fears of the sicknesses here in the City, it being said that two or three houses are already shut up. God preserve us all.” The diary entries continue throughout the year, documenting the terrible conditions in the city as many thousands die, until Winter’s freezing cold reduces the number of fleas that spread the disease. The symptoms of the plague begin like those of a bad cold. A high fever follows, with vomiting and painful black swellings, called buboes appearing in the groin and under the armpits. His diaries will cover a period from January 1660 to May 1669. In them, he will also write about the Great Fire of London in 1666. 1796 The first U.S. patent for a pill of any kind is issued to Samuel Lee, Jr., of Connecticut, for a “Composition of bilious pills” which he markets as “Lee’s Windham Pills.” The pills are highly popular for a long period. An 1803 advertisement for “Doctor Lee’s Patent New-London Bilious Pills” will describe them as “Interesting to all sea-faring People” and promise to cure a variety of ills, including “foul stomachs, where pukes are indicated.” 1878 Louis Pasteur lectures at the French Academy of Science in support of his germ theory of disease, in which he holds that many diseases are caused by tiny organisms. Pasteur also describes ways to prevent infection, and provides skeptics with an experiment with which to prove the theory to themselves. 1883 The Edison Electric Illuminating Co. is incorporated. It will later build the first three-wire central station for incandescent lighting in the U.S. 1897 At the Royal Institution Friday Evening Discourse, Joseph John Thomson, first announces the existence of what will later be known as electrons. Thomson tells the audience that earlier in the year, he had made a surprising discovery. He had found a particle of matter a thousand times smaller than the atom. He calls it a corpuscle, meaning “small body.” Although Thomson is the director of the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, and one of the most respected scientists in Great Britain, the scientists present find the news difficult to believe. They believe that the atom is the smallest and most indivisible part of matter in existence. Nevertheless, the electron is historically the first elementary particle to be discovered. 1935 The two millionth U.S. patent is granted to Joseph Ledwinka for a method of vehicle wheel construction. 1938 The cartoon short Porky’s Hare Hunt debuts in movie theaters, introducing Bugs Bunny. 1939 Cosmic rays entering a Geiger-Mueller counter produce electrical impulses used to control electrical power. The first ever such event is used for the illumination ceremony of the 1939 New York World’s Fair. The counter, at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, switches on an electrical circuit wired to a display at the Lagoon of Nations where relays activate local battery circuits, ringing bells and flashing lights to signal each capture of a cosmic ray. Guest speaker Albert Einstein explains cosmic rays. Unfortunately, his accent and a faulty amplification system render his words incomprehensible to the crowd. Upon the tenth ray’s signal, a huge light is meant to be turned on to illuminate the 600 foot Trylon triangular spire, but the power source fails. The RCA-owned NBC network launches regular public television service with the formal opening of the 1939 New York World’s Fair by President Franklin Roosevelt. (It is the first of only two appearances Roosevelt will make on television.) The service will air two hours of programs a week, to be received on RCA sets, in order to “to make the art of television available to the public.” By the end of the year, a thousand receivers will be sold in the U.S. The screens of the receivers are initially only about five inches across. 1946 J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly submit a set of tentative specifications to the Census Bureau for their ENIAC machine, following an April 11th demonstration of the system. In the fall, the Census Bureau will award Eckert and Mauchly a contract to build the first commercial computer ever developed in the U.S., the UNIVAC I. 1947 In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, RCA demonstrates its simultaneous color system at the Franklin Institute. The system projects color images are on to an eight by ten foot screen from a film scanner. 1952 The first electronic computer symposium on the U.S. west coast is held in Los Angeles, California. 1955 The creation of the synthetically created element 101, is announced. It will later be named Mendelevium, after the historic chemist Dmitri Mendeleev, who is credited with creating the very first version of the periodic table of elements. The element was first synthesized by a team lead by Albert Ghiorso at the University of California, Berkeley (UCLA). 1973 The first criminal trial using entirely pre-recorded videotape evidence, Ohio v. McMillion, is heard by the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas in Ohio. 1982 New York Superior Court Judge Milton Feller declares a community ordinance in Garwood, New Jersey that requires video game players to be at least eighteen years old unconstitutional. 1987 Stephen “Woz” Wozniak files for a divorce from his second wife Candice Clark citing irreconcilable differences as the cause. He will receive custody of their children, Jese John, and Sara Nadine. Their third child, Stephen, will be born seven months later. Version 0.03 of the RemoteAccess Bulletin Board System (BBS) is released. 1992 Microsoft has shipped ten million copies of its Windows 3.0 operating system since the start of the new year. 1993 Astronaut Hans Schlegel receives an experimental intravenous infusion while in orbit, aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. The German physicist has saline solution warmed to body temperature pumped into him through a needle. The aim of the experiment is find a method of treating dehydration and other common health issues associated with space travel, such as puffy faces and skinny legs. At the urging of Tim Berners-Lee, the directors of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) release the source code of the World Wide Web into the public domain, making it freely available to anyone, without licensing fees. The decision to make their products freely available, which is very much in line with the decisions of the earlier Internet pioneers, may possibly be the single most important moment in the history of the Internet. In fact, some historians mark this as the birth of the Web. Several versions of the software are still available to download from evolt.org’s browser archive. 1995 The National Science Foundation (NSF) announces that it will no longer allows direct access to the NSF backbone. The NSF has contracted with four companies that will be providers of access to its backbone. These companies will sell connections to groups, organizations, and companies. 1996 Blizzard Entertainment releases Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, an expansion pack for the real-time strategy game WarCraft II. 1997 Power Computing begins shipping the PowerCenter Pro line for the Mac OS. The systems feature 180 to 210MHz PowerPC 604e processors, 16X CD-ROM drives. Price: US$2,095 1999 Bleem, LLC announces having defeated a second attempt by Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) to levy a Temporary Restraining Order against them for the release of the Personal Computer-based PlayStation emulator BLEEM!. 2001 Imagine Media announces that it is closing down its online operations, including its online ad network, the Maximum PC Network, and Daily Radar (dailyradar), a popular online gaming publication similar to GameSpot and GameSpy. When the Daily Radar was shut down, a notice is left on the website stating, “The internet soufflé has collapsed (you probably read about it in the news), and Daily Radar is no longer publishing.” The notice was accompanied by a humor list of reason why the site was shut down. While Daily Radar was a popular review site, it was often the subject of controversy and criticism, as evidence by its frequently lampooning in the Penny Arcade webcomic. 2002 Indiana State University (ISU) inadvertently posts personal information about ten thousand students who were enrolled in the 1996-97 school year on the Internet, including their names and social security numbers. The information will remain online for two weeks, from April 30 to May 14. The incident was not the result of hacking, and, according to later interviews, no one was disciplined for the mistake, though it does make national headlines. 2004 The Sasser worm begins spreading in the wild, affecting computers running Windows XP or Windows 2000. It’s name comes from from the fact that it exploits a buffer overflow in the Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS) of the operating systems. On May 7, Sven Jaschan, an eighteen year-old German computer science student from Rotenburg, Lower Saxony will be arrested for writing the worm. 2006 Version 4.10 of the popular Linux distribution Ubuntu, is released. Visit the official Ubuntu website. Code-name: Warty Warthog 2008 In an article in the journal Nature, HP Labs announces the successful creation of a memristor, which it describes as the fourth basic electronic element, after the capacitor, inductor, and resistor. Memristors are a class of passive two-terminal circuit elements that maintain a functional relationship between the time integrals of current and voltage. The memristor was first conceived of in 1971 by University of California, Berkeley professor Leon Chua. The discovery will have a tremendous impact on electronic engineering, possibly leading the way to the development of computers that don’t need to be booted up. 2009 Google releases version 1.5 (Cupcake) of the Android mobile operating system.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Apr 2014 22:53:25 +0000
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