Geek Facts

In 1802, Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel was born. Niels Abel proved the impossibility of solving algebraically the general equation of the fifth degree. Learn more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Henrik_Abel

In 1922, all thirteen million telephones in the United States and Canada went silent for one minute. This was to honor Alexander Graham Bell as his funeral began. The inventor of the telephone, telegraph and nearly thirty other inventions passed away on August 2, 1922.

In 1977, Tandy Corporation announced the TRS-80 Model I microcomputer. The TRS-80 was the first mass-produced desktop computer. It was based on the Z-80 8-bit microprocessor and featured 4KB RAM. a 12-inch video display, and a cassette-based data recorder. The computer uses the TRSDOS and

In 1932, the positron was discovered by Carl D. Anderson. The positron has the same mass as an electron but the opposite charge. This differs from a proton that has an opposite charge from an electron, the same as a positron, but not the same

In 1818, Maria Mitchell, America’s first woman astronomer, was born. In 1847, she discovered a comet now known as “Miss Mitchell’s Comet”. She later became the first woman member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Association for the Advancement of Science.

In 1980, 
Radio Shack introduced the TRS-80 Pocket Computer. Manufactured by Sharp, the PC-1 featured a twenty-four character display, a QWERTY keyboard and 1.9 KB of programmable memory, all for $230. Learn more at http://oldcomputers.net/trs80pc1.html. In 1964, NASA’s space probe Ranger 7 transmitted the first

In 2005, astronomers announced their discovery of the dwarf planet Eris. Eris was discovered by the team of Mike Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David Rabinowitz on January 5, 2005, from images taken on October 21, 2003. A dwarf planet is a celestial body in direct

In 1981, IBM announced its first desktop computer, the System/23 Datamaster, just one month before the IBM PC. A full-function data processing installation, with a single computer workstation and an 80 character-per-second printer, cost $9,830. At the time, that was IBM’s lowest-priced small business system.

In 1993, Microsoft released the Windows NT 3.1 operating system. Windows NT 3.1 was the first version of Windows NT. Unlike Windows 3.1, Windows NT 3.1 was a 32-bit operating system written from the ground up. Learn more at http://toastytech.com/guis/nt31.html. In 1988, Radio Shack announced

In 1989, Robert Tappan Morris became the first person to be indicted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Morris was prosecuted for creating and releasing the Morris worm, generally considered to be the first Internet worm. Learn more at http://timelines.com/1989/7/26/first-indictment-under-computer-fraud-and-abuse-act.

In 1984, Cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space. Her spacewalk lasted 3 hours and 35 minutes.  Of the sixty Soviet/Russian space walkers, she is the only woman. Learn more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svetlana_Savitskaya.

In 1847, Richard March Hoe received a patent for a rotary-type printing press. The rotary printing press placed the type on a revolving cylinder, making it much faster than the flatbed printing press. It was sometimes called the “Hoe lightning press”. Learn more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_March_Hoe.

In 1829, William Austin Burt received a patent for his typographer, an early forerunner of the typewriter. The typographer was a rectangular wooden box 12 inches wide, 12 inches high, and 18 inches long. It mechanically worked by depressing a rotating lever so that an