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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