1990
Adobe Photoshop
Developed in the late 1980s by PhD student Thomas Knoll, it came to the attention of his brother John, who drew on his experience working for George Lucas’ visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic. They approached Adobe, who bought the distribution licence, and Photoshop 1.0 was released in February 1990.
World Wide Web
The internet (a system of interconnected computer networks) was created in the late 60s, but limited to government departments and research institutions. Tim Berners-Lee a British engineer and computer scientist, working at CERN, developed the first web server, the first web browser, and a document formatting protocol, called Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). He also created the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and a system of globally unique identifiers for resources on the Web and elsewhere, the universal document identifier (UDI), later known as uniform resource locator (URL). The first web site, published on December 20th, 1990, was quite rudimentary.
Hubble Space Telescope
Launched in April, it revolutionised astronomy. Its 5 main instruments observe in the ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Hubble's orbit outside the distortion of Earth's atmosphere allows it to capture extremely high-resolution images with substantially lower background light than ground-based telescopes.
1991
Linux
During his second year at the University of Helsinki, Linus Torvalds he set out to build a new operating system for his Intel PC, which developed into the industry-changing open-source Linux operating system. This ended up as one of the largest platforms for internet companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter.
1992
Text messages
In 1992 Neil Papworth, a former developer at Sema Group Telecoms, successfully sent the first text message to Richard Jarvis, a director at Vodafone. At the time, cell phones didn't have keyboards, so Papworth typed his "Merry Christmas" message on a PC. Early on, text messaging was largely underutilized as phones and network carriers weren’t very accommodating. Screens were tiny and without a keyboard it was quite cumbersome to type out sentences with a numerical dialling input layout. It caught on more in the late 90s as manufacturers came out with models with full QWERTY keyboards.
Nokia 1011
Mobile phones (affectionately known as bricks) appeared on the market in the 1980s. When Nokia launched its first cell phone, the 1011 on 10th November 1992, it changed the way cell phones were viewed, being the first mass-produced GSM phone, and the first mobile phone to support SMS text messages.
1993
MP3s
This file format was defined as a standard for audio encoding by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) - a working group of industry experts. It uses lossy compression to encode data using inexact approximations and the partial discarding of data, allowing for a large reduction in file sizes when compared to uncompressed audio. The combination of small size and acceptable fidelity led to a boom in the distribution of music over the Internet in the late 1990s, with MP3 serving as an enabling technology at a time when bandwidth and storage were still at a premium.
German engineer Karlheinz Brandenburg was part of the team at the Fraunhofer Institute who developed the format and, due to his contributions, is often regarded as the “father of the MP3.” The song that was chosen to encode the first MP3 was "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega. After some setbacks, including an instance in 1991 in which the project almost died, they produced an audio file in 1992 that Brandenburg described as sounding exactly like on the CD, and the format was officially published in 1993.
PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants)
These became popular in the mid-1990s with the release of the touchscreen Apple Newton in 1993, although it had a monochrome screen. Later in the late 1990s, the first full-colour PDAs were released, but they had a short battery life. These would gradually merge their features with mobile phones, leading to smartphones such as the iPhone.
1994
Smartphone
Credited as the first smartphone, the IBM Simon was manufactured by Mitsubishi Electric, which integrated features with its own cellular radio technologies. It featured a liquid-crystal display (LCD) and PC Card support. The Simon was commercially unsuccessful, particularly due to its bulky form factor and limited battery life, using NiCad batteries rather than the nickel–metal hydride batteries commonly used in mobile phones in the 1990s, or lithium-ion batteries used in modern smartphones.
1995
Windows 95
The successor to Windows 3.1, it was the first version to include the modern “Windows Feel” (Taskbar, Start Menu) and featured significant improvements over its predecessor, most notably in the graphical user interface (GUI) and in its simplified "plug-and-play" features. It gained immediate popularity and made Windows the standard operating system for most PCs. Windows 98 was even more successful three years later.
Global Positioning System (GPS)
The first prototype spacecraft was launched in 1978 and the full constellation of 24 satellites were installed in 1993, but the system didn't become fully operational for a couple of years. This satellite-based radio navigation system is one of the global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) that provide geolocation and time information to a GPS receiver anywhere on or near the Earth where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites.
1996
DVDs
The DVD (short for "digital video disc") was developed in 1995 and released in 1996 as a replacement for VHS. After the hassle of the VHS/Betamax competition, five of the leading computer companies (IBM, Apple, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft) banded together and came to an agreement on a single format. Toshiba released the world's first DVD player in Japan, the SD-3000, however Sony claimed to be the first player in the US the following year. Fujitsu released the first DVD-ROM-equipped computer on November 6 1996 in Great Britain, with Toshiba, Sony and several others appearing by the following May.
1997
Plasma screens
Although the concept was proposed in 1936, and the first prototype was created in the mid 60s, plasma flat panel televisions become commercially available this year, competing against CRT televisions. Philips introduced at CES and CeBIT the first large commercially available flat-panel TV, using the Fujitsu panels. Philips had plans to sell it for 70,000 French francs. It was released as the Philips 42PW9962. It was available at four Sears locations in the US for $14,999, including in-home installation. Pioneer and Fujitsu also began selling plasma televisions that year, and other manufacturers followed.
Although orange-on-black monochrome display plasma screens were available from early 80s, full colour flat panel computer monitors were released commercially to the public in the mid-to-late 90s.
Netflix
Originally launched during the dial-up Internet era, it began by offering DVDs mailed straight to one's home, which the user could select in an online queue. By 2007 it started to offer streaming directly from the Internet, making it a competitor to conventional network television.
1998
Google
Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin met in 1995 at Stanford University. In 1996, the two were writing a program for a search engine called Backrub, and after the success of this platform, they registered the domain name Google.com in 1997. They continued to develop what would become the largest search engine of the in the garage of a friend Susan Wojcicki (who went on to be the director of YouTube). Google was officially incorporated as a company in September 1998.
1999
BlackBerry
The first version was released in January as a two-way pager in Munich, Germany, using the same hardware as the Inter@ctive pager 950, and running on the Mobitex network. It was a solution devised by RIM (Research in Motion) for delivering e-mail over several different wireless networks. The original BlackBerry device had a monochrome display while newer models installed colour displays.
Other Scientific notables
September 90 - The first successful somatic gene therapy trials began.
October 90 - Human Genome Project formally began, with the objective of determining the DNA sequence of the entire euchromatic human genome within 13 years.
January 91 - The first intracytoplasmic sperm injection in vitro fertilization produced baby was born by mechanically injecting a single, selected sperm cell into an egg.
1991 - Detection of extrasolar planets orbiting a pulsar was confirmed.
The development of web browsers such as Netscape Navigator (originally known as Mosaic) in 1993 and Internet Explorer in 1995 made surfing the World Wide Web easier and more user friendly.
From 1994 onward, businesses started building e-commerce websites; e-commerce-only companies such as Amazon.com, eBay, AOL, and Yahoo! grew rapidly.
1994 - The FlavrSavr tomato, the first genetically modified food sold in the United States was introduced.
1994 - Proof of Fermat's Last Theorem was discovered by Andrew Wiles and completed.
April 95 - The NSFNET backbone was shut down, making the Internet a unified and "centreless" network without any restrictions on traffic types and essentially causing the Dot com bubble by attracting large-scale corporate investment in the Internet.
July 96 - Dolly the sheep was cloned from an adult somatic cell. The cell used as the donor for the cloning of Dolly was taken from a mammary gland, and the production of a healthy clone, therefore, proved that a cell taken from a specific part of the body could recreate a whole individual.
1996 - Construction started on the International Space Station.
1996 - Google began indexing the World Wide Web.
1996 - USB ports were invented, allowing for computing devices to connect more easily. The USB flash drive debuted in December 2000.
1997 - The first hybrid vehicles are produced.
1998 - The first portable MP3 player, the MPMan was released.
1999 – For several years, certain people had been frantically worrying about the Year 2000 problem (commonly known as Y2K), the computer glitch disaster expected to happen on January 1, 2000.Millions of pounds were squandered in combing through software and on the day it had the impact of a damp squib.
Also in the 90s
Email became popular; as a result Microsoft acquired the popular Hotmail webmail service in 97, renaming it MSN Hotmail.
High-end cars of the 1990s were installed with automatic doors, windows controlled with electric levers, GPS navigation, and CD drives.
DNA identification of individuals, introduced in the late 1980s, found wide application in criminal law.
Protease inhibitors introduced in 1987 allowing HAART therapy against HIV became an important part of HIV treatment in the 1990s and helped to extend and save millions of lives.
Discovery of dark matter, dark energy, brown dwarfs, and first confirmation of black holes.
Active matrix laptop computers became popular and easier to afford.
Satellite television became commonplace.