During one of our meetings last week, Rachel and Dean informed me that the month of April was going to be spent celebrating 20 years of Small Dog Electronics. Rachel suggested I write something about it in Kibbles and Bytes. I asked if I could write about what little ol’ me was doing back in 1995, but she seemed to think it would be more relevant to write about something technology related. Fair enough. I was only 7 in 1995. Generally speaking, 7 year olds don’t do too many interesting things. In 1995, my biggest concerns were probably whether or not I’d be able to use the swings at recess.
Okay, well if I wasn’t doing anything noteworthy in 1995, was anything else interesting happening? Actually, quite a bit happened that year. I’m really into cars and 1995 holds a special meaning in the car world. If you look back, you might notice that almost all manufacturers refreshed their offerings in 1996 and pushed through lots of model redesigns. This is because 1995 was the last year before the OBD II (On-Board Diagnostic) protocol was mandated in all new cars produced or sold in the U.S. Before OBD II, cars relied on primitive and widely varying computer control and diagnostics. Sometimes this was referred to as OBD I, but it wasn’t really standardized across the board, and many manufacturers had their own methods for reading the computer information. Nowadays with OBD II you can take any car to just about any garage and they can plug in a simple device to read the diagnostic information from the onboard computer system.
Sammy Hagar was probably pretty happy in 1995. Bill Clinton signed the National Highway Designation Act which officially ended the federal 55 mph speed limit.
One thing I definitely remember from 1995 was the release of Toy Story. At the time, it was the very first fully computer animated film. Aside from just being a really fun movie, I remember it was also so different. I’d never really seen anything animated like that before.
Another technological achievement from that year was the DVD format was announced. Considering the complete present day collapse of the video store in favor of streaming media, I think this may mean I’ve lived through the birth and death of an entire media format.
One thing from 1995 that even I didn’t know about was the official end of the NSFNET (National Science Foundation Network). This action basically changed the major backbone of the Internet from a government-funded and overseen education and research network to a completely privatized system.
A random smattering of other interesting things that happened in 1995 includes things like:
- Mississippi ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment thereby becoming the last state to approve the abolition of slavery.
- Windows 95 is released.
- The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City is bombed by Timothy McVeigh.
- eBay is founded.
- O.J. Simpson is found not guilty of the double murder of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
- NASA lost contact with Pioneer 11.
Oh…and of course, Small Dog Electronics was formed in 1995!