90’s – The Milestone Decade for Technologies – Year 1992 & 1993

Introduction

Can anyone tell the best part about growing up in the 90s? The obvious answer is Technology!! As is evident from previous 2 blogs, 90s was an important decade when it came to technological development.

World Wide Web caught people’s attention after rise of internet in earlier years of the decade. This was followed by many iconic gadgets that 90’s kids can never ever forget.

Let us see what were the best gadgets of the year 1992 and how they paved way for future growth of the technology.

1. Sony Trinitron –

Trinitron is Sony’s brand name for its line of aperture-grille-based CRTs used in television sets and computer displays. The Trinitron TVs delivered amazing visuals and sound that had never been seen or heard in any of the before models of TVs.

The name Trinitron was derived from two words – “trinity” meaning the union of three, and “tron” from the electron tube. Because Trinitron combined the three separate electron guns of other CRT designs into one.

2. Sony Mini Disc Player –

Sony MZ1 was the first minidisc player released in 1992. Minidisc is a magneto-optical disc-based data storage format offering a capacity of 74 minutes which was later increased to 80 minutes of digitized audio or 1 gigabyte of Hi-MD data.

The launch of Minidisc player put a hold to the sales of cassettes and the related Walkman gadgets for quite a longer time in the west. And this mark the beginning of a new future for music industry. It was the most advanced technology of the time. Sony marketed these gadgets until as recently as 2013.

3. Ensoniq ASR-10 –

ASR stands for Advanced Sampling Recorder. Ensoniq produced this sampling keyboard between 1992 and 1998. It was the follow-up product to the very popular Ensoniq EPS and Ensoniq EPS-16+. It was an example of complete digital music production studio.

It’s a 16-bit sampler that came in both keyboard and rack-mount versions. It was among the most powerful samplers of that time as it didn’t require a computer or additional equipment to create a complete song. It came packed in with a powerful and flexible effects unit, polyphonic aftertouch, an advanced MIDI sequencer, load-while-playing abilities and a powerful multi-layered synthesis engine.

Though in 1992, there were only 3 gadgets that became very popular but they were some major launches which paved a way for great future developments of technology in the Entertainment and Music Industry.

Best Gadgets of 1993 –

Now, let’s take a tour down the memory lane of the best gadgets in the year 1993.

1. Casio G-Shock Frogman Series –

Frogman is the high-end model of the Casio G-Shock line of watches. The Master of G line of watches were specially designed as a diving watch. It is one of the toughest watches of that time to which no other rivals could compete.

It had an asymmetric shape and is attached eccentrically on its straps. This premium timepiece was and still is the only ISO certified 200M water resistant G-shock which logged dive time data, had an EL backlight and displayed the date and time.

2. Hewlett-Packard 100LX –

A fully PC-compatible palmtop computer with an improved library of built-in applications, a CGA-compatible display, a 9-pin serial port, and longer battery life. The expandable version of 95LX, but comes with the same standard features and offered additional expandability. This palmtop had 1MB RAM which could be expanded up to 64MB using the PCMCIA slot.

The palmtop offered additional built-in software including Database and Notetaker. It packed a six-row QWERTY keyboard and came stocked with Microsoft MS-DOS 5.0.

3. The Talk boy –

The credits of publicity of this gadget goes to Home Alone II. This is a little and portable cassette player and recorder. It lets you speed up or slow down a recording or even playing the cassette with variable speed, which really helped in pulling up good pranks.

It was manufactured by Tiger Electronics, which is now owned by Hasbro, and also came up with a version in pink called Talk girl.

4. HP Omnibook 300 –

The original Omnibook 300 came packed with an Intel 386SXLV CPU and a nine-inch monochrome VGA Display with 16 shades of gray. The Omnibook 300 was made by the calculator division of HP. It also had a rechargeable battery which lasts for 5 hours in the hard disc model and for nine hours in the flash memory model.

The standard model came with 2MB RAM, a 9-pin serial port and a parallel printer port. It had 2 PCMCIA slots in which to connect additional memory, modem, network card or other peripheral.

5. Psion 3A Organiser –

Psion 3 models were a major advance on the Psion Organiser. With the launch of organisers range a new way of managing the files: the program icons are shown in a horizontal line and the associated files drop down beneath them.

It is a British designed Clamshell Palmtop with a rounded body and one of the smallest of the Keyboard palmtops. The palmtop is supplied with 1620 Lithium battery but also require the two alkaline AA batteries. There is a provision for external 9 volt DC power supply for your palmtops to work but will not recharge batteries.

It has a 480 by 160 pixel LCD display. The display contrast could be adjusted via the software from the keyboard.

6. IBM Simon Personal Communicator –

We could name it as the first true smartphone with a touchscreen interface and also equipped with a stylus to carry out some functions. This personal communicator was a handheld gadget is a combination of a mobile phone and PDA designed and engineered by IBM corp.

IBM Simon Personal Communicator was a massive device with a battery guzzling design with a 16MHz processor. It has a 4.5 inch Black and White 160 * 293 LCD display. It had 1MB of RAM and 1 or 1.8 MB memory card support, and a nickel-cadmium battery.

The other functionalities include making phone calls, adding contacts, checking mails, making task lists and using third party apps.

So, till now you would have actually got the idea why 90’s was a really important decade for the growth of technology and why we called it ‘Evolutionary’.