CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “monk for the modern age” by George Parker, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.
"In this great world of sunshine and shadow, we are constantly casting shadows on those around us, and receiving shadows from them in return." —Home Monthly, 1860
Though Wikipedia traces the music genre "techno" to 1988, in fact the U.K. band Vicious Pink coined the term on March 27, 1982, in Sounds magazine. The cover of Pitt Technical Institute's 1970 yearbook, with its Kraftwerk-style portrait, offers a precursor.