Every week we bring you a snapshot
of the week in Geek History. This week we’re taking a peek at the public release
of Gmail, the first time a computer won against a chess champion, and the birth
of prolific inventor Thomas Edison.
Gmail Goes Public
It’s hard to believe that Gmail has only been around for seven years and that for the first
three years
of its life it was invite only. In 2007 Gmail dropped the invite only requirement (although they would hold onto the “beta” tag for another two years) and opened its doors for anyone to grab a username @gmail. For what seemed like an entire epoch in internet history Gmail had the slickest web-based email around with constant innovations and features rolling out from Gmail Labs. Only in the last year or so have major overhauls at competitors like Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail brought other services up to speed. Can’t stand reading a Week in Geek History entry without a random fact? Here you go: gmail.com was originally owned by the Garfield franchise and ran a service that delivered Garfield comics to your email inbox. No, we’re not kidding.
Deep Blue Proves Itself a Chess Master
Deep Blue was a super computer constructed by IBM with the sole purpose
of winning chess matches. In 2011 with the all seeing eye
of Google and the amazing computational abilities
of engines like Wolfram Alpha we simply take powerful computers immersed in our daily lives for granted. The 1996 match against reigning world chest champion Garry Kasparov where in Deep Blue held its own, but ultimately lost, in a 4-2 match shook a lot
of people up. What did it mean if something that was considered such an elegant and quintessentially human endeavor such as chess was so easy for a machine? A series
of upgrades helped Deep Blue outright win a match against Kasparov in 1997 (seen in the photo above). After the win Deep Blue was retired and disassembled. Parts
of Deep Blue are housed in the National Museum
of History and the Computer History Museum.
Birth
of Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was one
of the most prolific inventors in history and holds an astounding 1,093 US Patents. He is responsible for outright inventing or greatly refining major innovations in the history
of world culture including the phonograph, the movie camera, the carbon microphone used in nearly every telephone well into the 1980s, batteries for electric cars (a notion we’d take over a century to take seriously), voting machines, and
of course his enormous contribution to electric distribution systems. Despite the role
of scientist and inventor being largely unglamorous, Thomas Edison and his tumultuous relationship with fellow inventor Nikola Tesla have been fodder for everything from books, to comics, to movies, and video games.
Other Notable Moments from This Week in Geek History
Although we only shine the spotlight on
three interesting facts a week in our Geek History column, that doesn’t mean we don’t have space to highlight a few more in passing. This week in Geek History:
1971 – Apollo 14 returns to Earth after third Lunar mission.
1974 – Birth
of Robot Chicken creator Seth Green.
1986 – Death
of Dune creator Frank Herbert. Goodnight Dune.
1997 – Simpsons becomes longest running animated show on television.
Have an interesting bit
of geek trivia to share? Shoot us an email to
[email protected] with “history” in the subject line and we’ll be sure to add it to our list
of trivia.
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