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1991: The "Webcam"
Dr.Quentin Stafford-Fraser&Paul Jardetzki invented the first “webcam” (before the “web” was even a thing) at Cambridge. Why was it decided to invent such a thing you may ask, well let me tell you, it is not for a reason that I expected. These two gentlemen invented the webcam out of pure laziness, to keep an eye on how much coffee was in the coffee pot. This first webcam provided the user’s desktop with a one frame per second, grayscale 129x129 pixeled picture, my how the times have changed! -
1991: The "WorldWideWeb"
The “WorldWideWeb” was released to the public (originally proposed in 1989) by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau. Originally, it was created in order to share information within the CERN community. “In those days, there was different information on different computers, but you had to log on to different computers to get at it. Also, sometimes you had to learn a different program on each computer.”, Tim Berners-Lee. -
1993: "IBM Simon"
IBM Simon, the first smart phone was released. This first smart phone offered the customers a touch screen with no physical keys and had text, calendar, pager and even fax capabilities. All this technology at your fingertips back then would run you $899.00 but one major downside aside from the price is the fact that it was only operational in about 190 cities in 15 of the states in the U.S.A. I can’t imagine paying that much money for a product that you could only use in a few select places! -
1998: "BackRub" a.k.a Google
“BackRub” a.k.a. Google was created by two Stanford University PhD scholars. What started as a research project for the two quickly became one of the world’s greatest and wealthiest companies. The beginning concept of Google was page ranking while searching the WorldWideWeb as opposed to simply counting the number of hits on a website when searching. -
1999: "Bluetooth 1.0"
Dr. Jaap Haartsen’s creation allowed users to share files wirelessly and without browsing. This technology was a bit of a double edge sword(side note:this technology was named after a Viking king Harald "bluetooth" Gormsson …do you see what I did there with the whole double edge sword thing...) when it first came out. It was nice being able to share files w/o looking them up or connecting to a cord, however it was not fast by any means, so grab a coffee because you will be waiting a little bit.