August 23, 2011

Good morning! It's The Nerd's Almanac for Tuesday, August 23, 2011.

This is the anniversary of the patent on the tire chain in 1904. I mention this merely for the irony of a new technology that doesn't get much use anymore -- kind of reminds me of LP records and personal computers.

And on this date in 1966, the Lunar Orbiter 1 transmitted a number of photographs of the surface of the moon as well as the first two pictures ever taken of a little planet called Earth.

It's the birthday of Ted Codd, born in 1923. While working at IBM, he invented the theory behind the relational database, the type of database we most associate with storing data in rows of columns. Which is pretty much all of them, demonstrating Codd's continued importance to the field of computer science to this day.

Here is a quote for today...
"At the time, Nixon was normalizing relations with China. I figured that if he could normalize relations, then so could I."
-- Ted Codd, on choosing the word "normalization" for relational database modeling.

And that's the almanac for today. Nerds of the world, we salute you!

Sources:
Wikipedia: August 23
Wikipedia: tire chain
Wikipedia: Lunar Orbiter 1
Wikipedia photo: First View of Earth from Moon
Wikipedia: Edgar Codd
Wikipedia: Relational database
Burleson Consulting: Ted Codd