Video game systems for the home are a multi-million dollar industry and the current popular consoles from companies like Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft are technological marvels with games that look more like movies than like video games. The thing all of these systems have in common is they owe their existence to one of the earliest arcade video games that was translated into a home version and was responsible for the beginning of the video game industry. The game released in 1972 by Atari is PONG which is a game based on tennis and has simple graphics by today’s standards but was a phenomenon when it was first released. Atari founder Nolan Bushnell assigned the task of designing the game to Allan Alcorn as a training exercise. Alcorn was experienced with electrical engineering and computer science but had never designed games before so this was way to get him accustomed to creating games. Bushnell based his idea on an electronic table tennis game he had seen for the Magnavox Odyssey video game system. The game is played either by one player versus to computer or two players against each other by controlling a paddle that moves vertically on the screen. A ball is volleyed back and forth and points are scored by hitting to ball past the opponents paddle. Shortly after the game was released in bars and arcades, other companies created their own versions of PONG.

Atari added features to their designs and to stay ahead of the competition and they pushed their employees to design and create new games. In 1974, an Atari employee named Harold Lee suggested making a version of Pong for the home that would work with television sets. Atari promoted the idea to some companies who thought the product was too much of a risk and turned them down. Sears was interested in the product and offered an exclusive deal to sell the product with the Sears Tele-Games logo. The product launched on a limited basis during the Christmas season of 1975 and was an instant success selling approximately 150,000 units. Predictably, other companies jumped on the band wagon and released their own home versions of the game adding variations and other features. To try and stay ahead, Atari released new versions over the years with elements such as 4 players working together in pairs or playing against each other.

Magnavox wound up suing Atari after PONG became such a success claiming they had violated their patent and Nolan Bushnell settled with them out of court in 1976. As part of the settlement, Magnavox would get rights to Atari products for one year so Atari decided to delay releasing anything for that year. Magnavox sued other companies that produced similar games and either settled or won. Regardless of the beginning of the idea, it is widely believed that Atari Pong was the game that laid the foundation for the success of video games in arcades and also in the home.

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Few books have played such a large role in history as Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, except perhaps the Bible and the Koran. Published on November 24, 1859, Darwin’s book discussed such new ideas as natural selection, the survival of the fittest and of course, the natural evolutionary progression of homo sapiens. This non religious version of reality sparked a controversy that the world had never known.

Darwin’s research for the book had taken place on the HMS Beagle years before. As he traveled to the Galapagos Islands and other exotic places, he made observations on the nature of environment and the effect of climate on the development of species. He had a theory that animals were not merely created by an invisible being but they progressed along a very long line of evolution. Their “origins” were in the prehistoric world. Pure heresy of course.

That may be why it took Darwin several years before he spoke and wrote publicly on his theory of evolution. The first edition consisted of only 1, 250 copies. A second printing took place in December adding an additional 3,000 copies as well as a German translation to the controversy.

For forward thinking Victorians, Darwin’s book was the must have item of the year. Those who embraced the humanist enlightenment sentiments of the previous century felt compelled to explore such new “scientific” ideas. Science was on the rise in the mid to late 19^th century and the scientific method found favor among academics.

There was talk of a knighthood for Darwin before the church interposed. Darwin’s peers reacted in one of two ways: in favor or against the concept that man was descended from apes. Less than a year after the book was published, the term “Darwinism” was coined.

This was the era of tea rooms and private clubs, public libraries and the graduation of public space into a permanent part of society. Many people didn’t quite understand the concept as it was still so new, but it didn’t stop them from trying. The book was read and debated, sparked both cries of heresy and cries of progress. Darwin had changed human perception forever, cast doubt into tightly fixed views. Pulled a Copernicus if you will.

If you were alive in 1859, you had heard of Darwin’s book on the natural order of things. And of course, if you are alive today, You’ve probably heard of it too. Charles Darwin’s theories have enjoyed over a century of debate and study. Despite the fossil record, the work of anthropologists and the logical nature of the idea, many still refuse to accept Darwin’s theories. Because of this, there seems no let up in the debate or argument that started over 140 years ago. Sometimes a book is more than a book. Sometimes it’s the start of an historical movement.

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Born in Albany in 1874, Charles Fort, the so-called “father of modern phenomenalism, ” was something of a factotum in his early years. After a formative trek from England to the south of Africa, Fort spent the next decade of life working odd jobs, while attempting to gain a foothold as a newsman and science fiction novelist. During this time, Fort produced ten books — only one of which ever saw publication.

It wasn’t until the age of 42 that Fort finally made his entrance to a wider readership. After a rather large inheritance from the untimely death of his brother allowed him a more leisurely lifestyle, the now full-time writer began his first non-fiction endeavor. For the rest of his life, Fort would spend hours poring over newspapers, academic journals and scientific theses, meticulously cataloguing each recorded instance of events dubbed impossible by the scientific establishment.

These reports of spontaneous human combustion, unidentified lights in the sky, stigmata, phantom creatures, teleportation — a term he coined — and the like were eventually compiled into Fort’s four best-selling books: The Book of the Damned (1919), New Lands (1923), Lo! (1931) and Wild Talents (1932). Much to his surprise, they proved be incredibly successful and remain in print to this day.

Fort’s interest in seeking out anomalous phenomena seems be an outgrowth of an inborn anti-authoritarian streak. Never in his work does he to claim to know the cause of these freak occurrences outright; rather, he merely points to the inability of then-modern day science to account for events that shouldn’t be possible, yet were witnessed by dozens – and sometimes hundreds – of bystanders.

For instance, he rejected the notion that the scientific mainstream had delivered satisfactory explanation for a happening near and dear to his own heart: mysterious falls of frogs, fish, stones and colored rain from the sky. Instead, he postulated that a realm he dubbed the Super-Sargasso Sea existed somewhere in the atmosphere. Random material from the Earth, he reasoned, was sucked up at random into this “sea,” then deposited at random to another point on the globe.

Such theories, however, may have been yet another mode for Fort to thumb his at the powers-that-be. He labeled himself an intellectual agnostic and wrote in the very first chapter of Lo! that “I believe nothing of my own that I have ever written.” After his death in 1932, Fort’s many followers carried on his curiosity driven crusade, eventually resulting in the founding of The Fortean Society the very same year and The International Fortean Organization in 1965.

Today, Fort’s name lives on as a part of the English language. The term “Fortean” is generally defined as “ pertaining to extraordinary and strange phenomenon and happenings.”

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November 17, 1800 the United States Congress and then president John Adams move the United States government from the comfort of Philadelphia to the hardly finished and rather rough quarters in Washington D.C. Adams would become the first American president to live in the White House.

John Adams was the vice president under the country’s founding father, George Washington. He became the country’s second president in 1796 when Washington declined a second term. Adams served from 1797 to 1801. Born in October of 1735, Adams early life was blessed in comparison to many Americans.

Graduating from Harvard at age 20, Adams was destined for life as a lawyer but he was better with a pen than any legal text. He enjoyed writing about current events and observing the world around him. He was a serious student of the world. Many described him as Washington’s perfect foil and a contrast to the first president’s outgoing personality.

Adam’s political life began before the American Revolution when he provided legal defense to British soldiers after the Boston Massacre. He was the leader of the Whig party and elected into the Massachusetts house in 1774 when he became a member of the famed Continental Congress. Adams believed in a democratic nation governed by the laws of its citizens.

Adams’ love of country and ardent desire to separate from Great Britain made him the ideal candidate to join Jefferson and Franklin on the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence. Finally Adams’ skill as a writer would find a use. A great use in fact.

He would also be involved in creating the Massachusetts constitution in 1780.

Adams did run for the job as America’s first president but was beaten squarely by Washington. The rules of the election back then dictated he would become the first vice president instead. He must have done a good job to be voted president during the next election.

Adams’ presidency was not a happy one. The party suffered from internal problems and Adams was not treated as a president should be by his own constituents. He left office disappointed with the way things had gone and did not try for a second term.

Interestingly, Adams passed away 50 years after the signing of the declaration in July 4, 1826. He believed that at least Thomas Jefferson survived from the original founders of American independence. He did not know that Jefferson had died a few hours before himself. Adams’ last words were “Thomas Jefferson still survives.”

Adams’ is a mixed legacy, one full of famous firsts and the legacy of freedom marred with the internal division of his party.

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