Technology of the 80's and 90's

Impressive times

 

The late 1980s and early 1990s were, for me, a period where science and technology reached groundbreaking strides. We’re talking about an era that introduced us to such high-tech innovations as 8-bit gaming consoles, compact audio systems, mobile phones, portable listening devices, and state-of-the-art music instruments. A time when Apple was just on the up, Casio played trendsetter on the wristwatch front, Nintendo ushered in the next generation of home entertainment, and Sony reigned supreme as the electronics king.

 

In the early 90's Pocket PCs, portable messaging communicators and audio equipment were just a few of the many awesome gadgets that emerged. It was a time when companies like Sony were dominating the home entertainment market, and Motorola were ushering in the new wave of mobile devices, while Apple were laying the groundwork for the modern laptop. We experienced two major gaming console wars and welcomed the birth of the digital camera.

 

This was where I started to become a sales person, fascinated in the world of technology

 

Colorgraph Ltd was a company specialising in colour printer, colour scanning and digital camera technology. Their goal was to sell solutions that, for the first time, allowed a digital image to be taken, manipulated on a computer and then printed, all on one desk and potentially within an hour or so.

 

Achieving this level of specialism in the early 90's however proved to be a difficult and lengthy task.

 

Computing was still at the 286 and 386 point, 256k was a lot of DRAM, graphics cards with 1024x768 resolution and 16 colours was advanced stuff. Hard drives were running at 20MB and expected to last about 3 years if used regularly. Portable hard drive technology came in the form of floppy disks capable of storing around 1.2MB of data and plugging any kind of digital device into a computer would be done via a serial or parallel port which meant slow progress. The alternative was a SCSI solution which involved installing a card into the computer and using DOS commands to achieve this.

 

I was working at Colorgraph at the time and was responsible for working with a number of manufactures including Kodak, Mitsubishi, Polaroid, Silicon Graphics and many others to promote their new digital technology to a dealer, reseller and partner network across the UK through road shows and exhibitions.

 

It was a very interesting time, an age where technology stood still long enough to learn what it did and how to make the best of it. A time when a new product came out every couple of years and Windows changes were few and far between.

 

To put all this into perspective, the first Kodak digital camera I began selling was £10,000 (excluding lenses), couple this with an A4 dye sublimation colour printer costing around £10,000 and adding this to a 386 computer costing around £1,500 (excluding software) and you had a solution which enabled you to take a digital picture, manipulate it, and then print it.

 

All this could now be done by the early 1990's and would only cost around £20,000 to achieve. What a bargain.

 

Whilst this was an immense amount of money even by today's standards, I successfully sold many cameras, printers and PCs over a number of years.

 

I will always look back on this period with great memories and an age in which each technology jump was awesome, jaw dropping and unbelievable. We all seemed grateful and in awe of the world as it was.

 

Great times, fond memories