2. • 1994: THE SONY PLAYSTATION (GAMES)
• By the mid-'90s it was clear that videogames were here to stay, but they were still thought of
primarily as a children’s toy. Many electronics makers thought the way to expand the market
was with "set-top boxes" that would play games, movies, music etc. and browse the nascent
web.
• But Sony cut through all the confusion and defined a whole new market for pure gaming
with PlayStation. The CD-ROM format didn’t just allow gamemakers to craft more realistic
worlds, it let Sony sell PlayStation as an upscale piece of technology perfect for the college
dorm room. By making games for adults, PlayStation helped the game industry balloon even
larger. It was the first gaming platform to sell over 100 million units.
3. • 1995: GPS-GUIDED MUNITIONS (WAR)
• During the 1990-1991 Gulf War, Iraqi ex-dictator Saddam Hussein ordered his
armies to invade Kuwait. In response, the United States mounted an all-out
bombardment of Iraqi troops and infrastructure, followed by a counter-invasion that
expelled Saddam's forces from the country. During the war, Iraq was also hit with
thousands of precision-guided bombs -- a weapon that had never before seen large-
scale use in combat.
4. • 1991: LINUS DOES LINUX (COMPUTERS)
• In the summer of 1991, Linus Torvalds was a student at the University of Helsinki
living with his mother, and he started building a new operating system for his 33-
MHz Intel PC. He called the project "just a hobby." He said it "won’t be big and
professional." But as it turns out, the notice he posted to an internet newsgroup
announcing the project was -- without a doubt -- one of the most important
moments in the history of computing.
5. • 1998: MP3 PLAYER (GADGETS)
• You only think the Apple iPod was the first MP3 player. Credit for inventing the device goes
to a South Korean company you've never heard of.
• Three years before Apple dominated the market with the iPod, SaeHan Information Systems
introduced the MPMan in 1998. It had 64 MB of memory, enough for a whopping 18 songs.
That's all of Nirvana's Nevermind and half of Pearl Jam's Ten.
6. • 1994: RQ-1 PREDATOR DRONE (VEHICLES)
• The General Atomics' RQ-1 Predator unmanned aircraft made its first flight in 1994.
But unlike most other new military aircraft that take years -- or even decades --
before entering service, the Predator was flying missions through former
Yugoslavian airspace just one year later. The rush to service proved to be a turning
point for remotely piloted aircraft, giving birth to a new form of unmanned combat.
7. • 1995: OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING (SECURITY)
• One of the first large-scale acts of terrorism in the United States occurred on April 19, 1995, when Timothy McVeigh
drove a rental truck filled with explosives to the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
• McVeigh, an anti-government activist who was later executed for the deed, killed 168 people and injured hundreds of
others.
• In a jailhouse interview, McVeigh likened the 19 children killed at a daycare center in the building as "collateral damage."
8. • 1999: WOMEN'S SOCCER (SPORTS)
• The 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup was the last Cup of the century, and arguably the most
important – not for who won, but for what they represented.
• The epic finale between the United States and China capped weeks of sold out matches in a
tournament that drew unprecedented crowds and media coverage. More than 90,000 people
packed the Rose Bowl, the largest audience ever for a women’s sporting event. Forty million
more watched it on television.
9. • 1990S: JOHN DOERR (BUSINESS)
• Before the 1990s, the title “venture capitalist” meant very little to anyone outside the business and
technology world. Then, we met John Doerr, the first venture capitalist to break big.
• Doerr started out working for Intel, first as an engineer and later as a salesperson. He left the chip
giant to join venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers in 1980, and soon after started
investing early in some of the technology giants we know today, like Google, Netscape, Amazon, and
Sun Microsystems. Those investments put John Doerr on the map as one of the most well-known
investors inside and outside of Silicon Valley.
10. • 1990S: WEB DESIGN (DESIGN)
• As increasingly powerful graphics capabilities and HyperText Markup Language became
prevalent in the early '90s, people were suddenly able to express themselves creatively on
their computers. The, in the mid-'90s, the internet explosion occurred and people were
suddenly building their own web pages. And they had options. They could use turquoise text.
They could animate GIFs. They could even make whole neon-colored banners flash. It was
chaos. An entire generation was catapulted into graphic design with little background.
11. • 1990S: THE INTERNET (CULTURE)
• The publication of Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau's "WorldWideWeb:
Proposal for a HyperText Project" on Nov. 12, 1990, lays the groundwork for the
most transformative medium of our times. Within a year, the web makes its public
debut; the Mosaic web browser helps bring the web to the masses starting in 1993.
