Learn an interesting fact to share with friends and increase your Geek Cred!
In 1802, Thomas Davenport, inventor of the first commercial electric motor, was born. While experimenting in 1834, Thomas Davenport developed what is known today as the DC motor. It took him three years to patent his motor. At first, the U.S. Patent Office denied his […]
In 1957 , Control Data Corporation (CDC), a firm which pioneered the field of supercomputers with Seymour Cray, was incorporated. CDC was one of the nine major US computer companies through most of the 1960s. The others were Burroughs Corporation, DEC, General Electric, Honeywell, IBM, NCR,
In 1988, the unmanned Russian spaceprobe Phobos 1 was launched on a mission to study Mars and its moons, Phobos and Deimos. The Phobos 1 spacecraft was lost enroute to Mars after a faulty command sequence sent from Earth caused the spacecraft to shut down.
In 1854, German physicist Georg Ohm died. Georg Ohm is best known for Ohm’s Law which states that the flow of electric current (I) through a conductor is directly proportional to the voltage (V) and inversely proportional to the resistance (R), or I = V
In 1996 , the first known Excel macro virus, Laroux, was discovered in Africa and Alaska. Written in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), Laroux was able to operate under Excel 5.x and 7.x under Windows 3.x, Windows 95 and Windows NT. It was the first macro
In 1956 , the Whirlwind at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology became the first computer to use a keyboard to allow direct user input. Other computers accepted instructions issued using dial, punch cards, and switches. The Whirlwind was also the first computer to display real time
Geek Fact for July 4th – The Keyboard and Hotmail Read More »
In 2001, Apple Computer stopped producing and marketing its Power Mac G4 Cube due to disappointing sales. One gripe many people had with the Cube was its lack of conventional Audio input and output. Instead, it came with an external USB amplifier and a set
Geek Fact for July 3rd – G4 Cube, Windows and Comets Read More »
In 1953, IBM announced the IBM 650, the world’s first mass-produced computer. Over 2,000 systems were produced between the first shipment in 1954 and its final manufacture in 1962. The IBM 650 ran programs from punch cards and stored numbers up to ten digits long
In 1977, FORTRAN-80, Microsoft’s second language product, was released at a cost of $500 for an individual license. The name FORTRAN is an acronym for FORmula TRANslation, because it was designed to allow easy translation of math formulas into code. Learn more at http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Cassini-Huygens/SEMVOZ1VQUD_0.html In
In 1948, three scientists from Bell Telephone Laboratories demonstrated the transistor. Besides explaining that the transistor could probably replace the vacuum tube, little was said of the transistor’s future applications. The scientists, John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain and William Shockley, were awarded a Nobel Prize
In 2007, the original iPhone was released. The iPhone featured a touchscreen, virtual keyboard, 2-megapixel camera and 8 GB of storage and sold for $599 with a 2-year contract with Cingular (now AT&T). Apple sold a mind-boggling 700,000 iPhones on its release weekend. Learn more
In 1983, NASA launched the Galaxy 1 satellite. The Galaxy 1 was used for general communications services, such as television relay, voice and data. It was dedicated to cable television transmission across the US. Learn more at http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/masterCatalog.do?sc=1983-065A
In 1929, the first mechanically scanned color television was demonstrated by Bell Laboratories in New York City. It consisted of three complete systems of photoelectric cells, amplifiers, glow-tubes, and color filters, with a series of mirrors to superimpose the red, green, and blue images into
In 1974, the first UPC bar code reader was used. At a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio, a laser beam in an NCR checkout terminal with a bar code reader read the UPC bar code symbol on a pack of Wrigley’s chewing gum and automatically
