Though the ‘80s started to combine culture and technology in new and exciting ways, the ‘90s really embraced the technological revolution. While it wasn’t until the 2000s that true smartphones were commercially released, many of the innovations of the ‘90s were precursors to the smartphones of today. When you think about all of the things the smartphone can do that used to require separate devices, it’s pretty crazy!
But let’s get to what you’re here for! Read on to learn more about 10 of the most influential ’90s technology innovations that have had a lasting impact.
Curious about ‘80s tech? Check out our article: The 10 Most Influential ’80s Technology Innovations
World Wide Web
Could this really be a post about important ‘90s tech innovations and not mention the internet? The web was first launched and used in 1990 — Tim Berners-Lee, with help from Robert Cailliau, was able to connect hypertext with the internet, which created the foundation for what we know as the web to this day. Web browsers soon followed, with some of the most popular in the early days being Netscape and Mosaic. Seriously, nothing would be the same today if not for the internet and web browsers!
Text Messaging
Prior to the ‘90s, instant communication mainly happened in person or via the phone, but that all changed with the advent of the internet and SMS text messages. In December 1992, the first text message was sent, simply saying “Merry Christmas.” But texting would soon explode into the preferred way of communicating. Remember when you had to pay per text?!
DVDs
While the ‘80s saw the invention of the Compact Disc, the ‘90s brought us the Digital Video Disc. DVDs look the same as CDs, but have a much larger storage capacity. As CDs modernized music quality, DVDs did the same for video, namely movies and television shows. They were much higher quality than VHS tapes, which degraded over time, and soon took over the market.
Adobe Photoshop
The first version of Photoshop was released in 1990, and photo editing and graphic design would never be the same. Brothers Thomas and John Knoll noticed that there was a dearth of options for photo-editing on computers, and decided to code their own. They developed it for many years before Adobe invested in them (Adobe was mostly known for having created PostScript and Illustrator at the time), and finally released version 1.0 in February 1990.
Google is so much more than a search engine these days, but back in 1996, that’s what Stanford PHD students Larry Page and Sergey Brin first created. Unlike earlier search engines, which just searched for how many times a word appeared on a page to surface results, Google used their own algorithm to determine page rank. The search engine became so influential that these days we just say “google it” when we tell people to do an internet search. Page and Brin’s motto back in those days was “don’t be evil.” Are they living up to these words these days? Now that’s the question!
MP3 Players
Though the Apple iPod wasn’t released until 2001, the Mp3 Player precursors to that disruptive piece of technology were introduced in 1998 by a South Korean company. It had just 64 mb of memory, which was enough to hold 18 songs. It was the first device to ever look at music in this way, and was really the beginning of the upending of the music industry.
PDAs / Palm Pilots
The first Palm Pilots, or Personal Digital Assistants, were introduced in 1996, and are arguably the real predecessor to smartphones and assistants like Siri and Alexa. The first model had a monochrome touch screen and a serial communications port. If you wanted a digital calendar and organizer, the Palm Pilot was where it was at.
Hubble Space Telescope
Though the Hubble is not the first space telescope, it is the most famous and versatile, renowned as both a vital research tool and a way to connect the public more readily to astronomy. The telescope was first launched into orbit in 1990, though it had originally been scheduled for 1983. But, the telescope didn’t work properly upon first launch, and had to be fixed in 1993. Luckily, it was fixed, and we’ve been receiving amazing images from it ever since.
Toyota Prius
Though electric vehicles had been around for many decades, it wasn’t until 1997 that the first mass-produced hybrid vehicle was released with the Toyota Prius. The vehicle was first introduced in Japan, with some richer people around the world importing it prior to its worldwide debut in 2000. The original design was a 4-door sedan — the 5-door hatchback design we all associate with the Prius was released in 2003.
DVR
In 1999, TiVo and ReplayTV both debuted a version of the Digital Video Recorder at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in January. The original TiVo DVR digitized and compressed analog video from any source, be it antenna, cable, or satellite. The DVR was a brand new way to record your favorite TV shows without having to use a VCR and VHS tape combo. Along with the DVD, the DVR marked the beginning of the end for the VCR and VHS tapes.
What was your favorite tech invention of the ‘90s? When did you first start texting? Let us know in the comments!
- All images taken from the Hubble Space Telescope are in monochromatic grayscale. These images pass through a variety of filters to produce color images. The process can also produce false-color versions of images just using filters for ultraviolet or infrared channels, for example.
- When Photoshop first released in 1990, it was only available for Macintosh computers and cost $895 (which would be about $1800 in 2021 dollars). In 1993, Adobe ported the program over to Windows.
- The first four films released on DVD were The Fugitive, Blade Runner: Director’s Cut, Eraser, and Assassins in December 1996.
- Google was initially funded by an August 1998 contribution of $100,000 from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, and had three other angel investors in 1998: Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos (damn he’s everywhere), Stanford University computer science professor David Cheriton, and entrepreneur Ram Shriram.
- Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the World Wide Web, was a scientist at CERN when he created the first web site, info.cern.ch, which provided an explanation of what the World Wide Web was, and how people could use a browser and set up a web server, as well as how to get started with your own website.
- All images taken from the Hubble Space Telescope are in monochromatic grayscale. These images pass through a variety of filters to produce color images. The process can also produce false-color versions of images just using filters for ultraviolet or infrared channels, for example.
- When Photoshop first released in 1990, it was only available for Macintosh computers and cost $895 (which would be about $1800 in 2021 dollars). In 1993, Adobe ported the program over to Windows.
- The first four films released on DVD were The Fugitive, Blade Runner: Director’s Cut, Eraser, and Assassins in December 1996.
- Google was initially funded by an August 1998 contribution of $100,000 from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, and had three other angel investors in 1998: Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos (damn he’s everywhere), Stanford University computer science professor David Cheriton, and entrepreneur Ram Shriram.
- Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the World Wide Web, was a scientist at CERN when he created the first web site, info.cern.ch, which provided an explanation of what the World Wide Web was, and how people could use a browser and set up a web server, as well as how to get started with your own website.
