2009 Top 25 Twenty Fifth Anniversaries for GEEKS

From the Mac's legendary Super Bowl debut to the less flamboyant births of Cisco, Dell, RIM and the future founder of Facebook, 1984 provided a boatload of technological achievement and geeky infamy.

1. AT&T asplodes: In 1974, Uncle Sam decided AT&T was a monopoly that needed demolition.

 Uncle Sam decided AT&T was a monopoly that needed demolition. Ten years later, it was demolished.

 Today AT&T (formerly SBC) now includes four of the seven RBOCs, proving that old goes-around, comes-around thing still holds.

2. Making the world safe for BETAMAX

......ensuring to this very day the dominant market position of Betamax.

3. It's a bouncing baby CISCO:

Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner .....founding of a router company.......

Cisco would become the world's richest company (market cap: $500 billion, March 2003) before falling back to Earth.

4. CRACKBERRY in motion:

Research in Motion, which sounds like it should be the name of a geek boy band, was founded in 1984 in the Canadian city of Waterloo, which sounds like it should be an ABBA song. What RIM did for the next 15 years is anybody's guess, but in 1999 the company introduced the first Blackberry (two-way pager edition).

5. CRASHING a jetliner for science:

on Dec. 1, 1984, Fitzhugh (Fitz) Fulton........remote-control pilot as NASA conducted its Controlled Impact Demonstration crash of a Boeing 720 in Edwards, Calif.

6. Neuromancer popularizes 'CYBERSPACE'

William Gibson's science-fiction classic won all kinds of awards ... and is also notable for bringing the word "cyberspace" into the general lexicon.

7. Dude, you're gonna be DELL

University of Texas student Michael Dell had the nutty idea of selling IBM PC-compatible computers manufactured from stock components directly to customers.....

His fledgling company, called PC's Limited, would become Dell Computer Corporation

8. DISCMAN gives CDs a leg up

In November, 1984, two years after mass production of CDs commenced, Sony released the first portable CD player, the D-50, a.k.a., Discman.

9. The ABCs of DNA FINGERPRINTING:

on Monday, Sept. 15, 1984, British researcher Sir Alec Jeffreys

 stared at a batch of X-ray film and recognized in its images a virtually foolproof method for putting bad guys behind bars and getting deadbeat dads to pony up. By day's end he was calling this technique DNA fingerprinting.

10. Your ELEPHONE'S ringing:

.... a telephone that works in an elevator." The Elephone was invented in, that's right, 1984.

11. The future of FACEBOOK is born:

Mark Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984 to Karen and Edward Zuckerberg of Boca Raton, Fla.

12. If you forgot why it's called FLASH memory ...

"The name was suggested by Masuoka's colleague, Shoji Ariizumi, because the erasure process of the memory contents reminded him of a flash of a camera,"

13. 'Who you gonna call? GHOSTBUSTERS!':

A staple on "funniest movies ever" lists, "Ghostbusters" opened June 8, 1984 to great reviews and boffo box office:

14. Bernie GOETZ: Geek with a gun:

("Subway Vigilante") Goetz was a geek -- electrical/nuclear engineering degree from NYU; livelihood then as (reportedly) now repairing electronics

15. 2600 The HACKER Quarterly debuts:

The 2600 reportedly refers to the fact that a 2600 hertz tone -- such as that created by a toy whistle tucked into boxes of Cap'n Crunch cereal -- could gain one access to telephone network systems, at least back in 1984.

16. Say hi to HASSIUM:

A synthetic element (No. 108) discovered by German scientists in 1984, it is apparently nasty stuff. From a geeky Web site: "Hassium is of research interest only due to its instability. As few atoms of this unstable element have ever been synthesized, it has no commercial use. Hassium is highly radioactive, and it would pose a radiation hazard if enough were assembled in one place."

17. K250: 'Isn't she lovely':

The K250, unveiled at the 1984 Summer NAMM trade show, is said to be the first electronic synthesizer capable of playing acoustic grand piano well enough to pass the Ella Fitzgerald test.

18. 'Hello, I'm a MAC':

"1984," aired during Super Bowl XVIII, Apple's Macintosh went on sale to the public.

19. MATHCOUNTS kicks spelling-bee ass: The first national MATHCOUNTS competition was held in 1984.

20. NTU: 'Where learning virtually happens':

National Technological University (NTU) was the first to be accredited as a "virtual"university for beaming courses via satellite to the likes of IBM, HP and Motorola.

21. Voila! BB84 QUANTUM cryptography protocol:

Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard developed the first quantum cryptography protocol in 1984.

22. 'Looks like a ROBOTICIDE, captain'

23. Out for a SPACE WALK:

In early February, 1984, McCandless became the first human to fly in space with neither a craft nor lifeline attached to same, as he wandered nearly a football field away from the space shuttle Challenger using a gas-powered jet-pack, or Manned Maneuvering Unit.

24: 'The TERMINATOR': Now that's network trouble:

P.S.: You, too, can download an "I'll be back" ringtone.

25. Transformers grow up, too:Autobots and Decepticons, alike -- have been more than meets the eye since 1984. Toys, television, feature films, these guys have done it all ... and don't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.