How To Read Microserfs

Microserfs is one my favourite books, but it’s an old book. It was written in 1995 about 1993, and many of its references are unfamiliar. This guide is a list of Wikipedia articles about topics mentioned in the book that add important context.

Tech Figures

• Bill Gates
• Steve Ballmer
• Louis Gerstner
• Steve Jobs
• Steve Wozniak
• Mitch Kapor
• Philippe Kahn
• Scott McNealy
• John Sculley
• Alan Turing
• Paul Allen
• Brenda Laurel
• Thomas J. Watson

Musicians

• Neil Peart
• Prince
• Kurt Cobain
• Courtney Love
• Madonna
• Leonard Cohen
• Morrissey
• David Bowie
• Chet Baker
• Bessie Smith
• Joan Baez
• Alice Cooper
• Herb Alpert
• Jim Morrison
• John Lennon
• Frank Sinatra
• Sting
• Marky Mark
• Raffi
• Yanni
• Elvis Presley
• Barbra Streisand
• Bobby Sherman
• Grace Jones

Sports Figures

• Randy Johnson
• Michael Jordan
• Hulk Hogan
• John Madden

Actors & Celebrities

• Elle Macpherson
• Burt Reynolds
• Loni Anderson
• Fabio Lanzoni
• William Shatner
• Leonard Nimoy
• Martha Stewart
• Arnold Schwarzenegger
• Charlton Heston
• Christy Turlington
• Claudia Schiffer
• Pamela Anderson
• Daniel Day-Lewis
• Sigourney Weaver
• George Lucas
• Steven Spielberg
• Aaron Spelling
• Barry Diller
• David Geffen
• Marilyn Monroe
• Tori Spelling
• Heather Locklear
• Anthony Robbins
• Gallagher
• Siegfried and Roy
• Cary Grant
• John Wayne Bobbitt
• Ricki Lake
• Oscar de la Renta
• Leslie Van Houten
• Kristy McNichol
• Lance Kerwin
• Susan Dey
• Lindsey Wagner
• Elizabeth Montgomery
• Joey Heatherton
• Justine Bateman
• Tina Yothers
• Nick the Greek
• Donna Karan
• Gene Roddenberry

Writers & Thinkers

• Edwin Abbott
• Marshall McLuhan
• Ayn Rand
• Timothy Leary
• Camille Paglia
• Kurt Vonnegut
• Aldous Huxley
• Alvin Toffler
• Dr. Seuss
• J.R.R. Tolkien

Artists

• René Magritte
• Ansel Adams
• Andy Warhol
• Pablo Picasso
• George Balanchine
• Rube Goldberg
• Margaret Keane

Politicians & Public Figures

• Al Gore
• Ross Perot
• Mother Teresa
• The Dalai Lama
• Hillary Clinton
• Ronald Reagan
• Henry Kissinger
• Nancy Reagan
• Lyndon Johnson
• Joseph McCarthy

Places

• Redmond, Washington
• Bellevue, Washington
• Seattle, Washington
• Bellingham, Washington
• Port Angeles, Washington
• Silicon Valley
• Palo Alto, California
• Cupertino, California
• Sammamish Plateau
• Whidbey Island
• Strait of Juan de Fuca
• Space Needle
• Boca Raton, Florida
• Tukwila, Washington
• Olympia, Washington
• Puget Sound
• The Kingdome
• Interstate 5
• McMinnville, Oregon
• Eugene, Oregon
• Medford, Oregon
• San Jose, California
• San Francisco
• San Carlos, California
• Menlo Park, California
• San Mateo, California
• Redwood City, California
• Mountain View, California
• Sunnyvale, California
• Burlingame, California
• Los Altos, California
• Oakland, California
• Pacifica, California
• Daly City, California
• Half Moon Bay, California
• Napa, California
• Santa Barbara, California
• Los Angeles
• Redondo Beach, California
• Las Vegas
• Groom Lake
• Stanford University
• Stanford Linear Accelerator
• Sand Hill Road
• El Camino Real
• CalTrain
• BART
• UC Santa Cruz
• Candlestick Park
• Coeur d’Alene, Idaho
• Toronto
• Waterloo, Ontario
• Ottawa
• Tokyo
• Kowloon
• Kerguelen Archipelago
• Biosphere 2
• Waxahachie
• Livermore
• Knott’s Berry Farm
• SeaWorld

Events

• Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp.
• Macworld Expo
• Apple Worldwide Developers Conference
• CES (trade show)
• Kobe earthquake
• 1994 Northridge earthquake
• 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake
• COMDEX
• Fall of the Berlin Wall
• Kennedy assassination
• Apollo 9
• Iron Rose competition

Organizations

• NORAD
• Sierra Club
• IATSE
• Trilateral Commission
• RAND Corporation

Tech Companies

• Microsoft
• IBM
• Apple
• Hewlett-Packard
• Intel
• Motorola
• Nintendo
• Xerox PARC
• NeXT
• Sun Microsystems
• Silicon Graphics (SGI)
• Oracle
• Electronic Arts
• NEC
• Compaq
• Sony
• Panasonic
• AT&T
• Nokia
• Samsung
• Canon
• 3DO
• General Magic
• Ampex
• Interval Research
• Lockheed
• TRW
• Boeing
• Claris
• Adobe
• Broderbund
• Maxis
• Cray
• Thinking Machines
• Wackenhut
• Ogilvy & Mather
• Siemens-Nixdorf
• Pacific Bell
• Cablevision
• Sandoz Pharmaceuticals

Software & Operating Systems

• Windows NT
• MS-DOS
• OS/2
• Microsoft Word
• Microsoft Excel
• WordPerfect
• UNIX
• QuarkXPress
• Quicken
• CorelDraw
• THINK C
• Inside Macintosh
• SoftImage

Hardware

• Pentium
• Intel 486
• MIPS architecture
• PowerBook
• Sinclair ZX81
• Tandy Corporation
• Sega Genesis
• Motorola 68000
• PowerPC
• Apple Newton
• Apple Lisa
• Macintosh Quadra
• Macintosh Classic
• Apple LaserWriter
• IBM PS/2
• Game Boy
• Nintendo Virtual Boy
• Atari
• Philips CD-i
• Pager
• SCSI
• ENIAC
• Polaroid
• VCR
• Dolby THX
• CD-ROM
• IBM Selectric
• Dictaphone
• VDT

Programming Languages

• Fortran
• Pascal
• Ada
• Lisp
• C++
• COBOL

Video Games

• Doom
• Tetris
• SimCity
• Super Mario Bros.
• Pong

Movies

• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Jurassic Park
• Curly Sue
• Boris and Natasha
• Ghostbusters
• Wayne’s World
• A Clockwork Orange
• Dirty Harry
• Tron
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind
• Logan’s Run
• Soylent Green
• Planet of the Apes
• The Poseidon Adventure
• Rosemary’s Baby
• King Kong
• 101 Dalmatians
• Lady and the Tramp
• Barbarella
• Valley of the Dolls
• Tootsie
• The Terminator
• Aliens
• The Bodyguard
• No Regrets for Our Youth
• The Andromeda Strain
• Dr. Faustus

TV Shows

• Seinfeld
• Star Trek
• Happy Days
• Jeopardy!
• The Monkees
• I Love Lucy
• The Brady Bunch
• The Bob Newhart Show
• The Mary Tyler Moore Show
• The Oprah Winfrey Show
• Melrose Place
• The Twilight Zone
• Bewitched
• The Partridge Family
• The Banana Splits
• Zoom
• Beverly Hills, 90210
• Baywatch
• Ren and Stimpy
• Wheel of Fortune
• Entertainment Tonight
• Hollywood Squares
• Family Ties
• Barney & Friends
• Charlie’s Angels
• Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom
• Fantasy Island
• Gilligan’s Island
• The Bionic Woman
• Buck Rogers
• Davey and Goliath
• Flipper
• The Osmonds
• Solid Gold
• The $10,000 Pyramid
• The Newlywed Game
• Secret Squirrel
• CNN
• Battlestar Galactica
• The Muppets
• Crunchy Frog

Cartoons

• The Simpsons
• The Flintstones
• Bugs Bunny
• Casper the Friendly Ghost
• Scrooge McDuck
• Richie Rich
• Popeye
• Rocky and Bullwinkle
• Itchy and Scratchy
• Ewoks
• Smurfs
• GI Joe
• Garfield
• Charlie Brown
• Hanna-Barbera
• The Fantastic Four
• Tintin
• I Gopher You
• Michigan J. Frog

Music

• Rush
• Grateful Dead
• Talking Heads
• Kraftwerk
• Human League
• Gary Numan
• Duran Duran
• English Beat
• Pink Floyd
• The Ramones
• The Germs
• Yes
• Nirvana
• The Doors
• Riot grrrl

Comic Strips

• The Far Side
• Bloom County
• Family Circus
• Dilbert
• Ziggy
• The Lockhorns
• Sally Forth
• Peanuts
• Spy vs. Spy

Books

• The Chronicles of Narnia
• Flatland
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
• Watership Down
• Lord of the Flies
• The Good Earth
• Tom Sawyer
• Getting Past OK
• Handbook of Highway Engineering

Magazines & Publications

• Wall Street Journal
• Condé Nast Traveler
• People
• The National Enquirer
• New York Times
• San Jose Mercury News
• Dr. Dobb’s Journal
• MacUser
• Red Herring
• Sunset
• Sassy
• ID magazine
• Road & Track
• Cats Magazine
• Cosmopolitan
• Life magazine

Cars

• AMC Hornet
• Ford Taurus
• Toyota Supra
• Mazda Miata
• Lexus SC
• Acura Legend
• Infiniti J30
• Saab Automobile
• Buick Skylark
• Geo Metro
• Porsche 928
• Nissan Altima
• Toyota Camry
• Honda Civic
• Datsun
• Volkswagen Microbus
• Daewoo
• Ford Model T
• Trabant
• Ferrari

Toys & Games

• Lego
• Hacky Sack
• Habitrail
• Troll doll
• Memory (game)
• Nerf
• Hot Wheels
• Barbie
• Play-Doh
• Sea Monkeys
• Frisbee
• Magic Eye
• Jarts
• Pez
• Fisher-Price
• PlaySkool
• Revell
• Monopoly
• Model trains
• GoBot
• Gak
• Dungeons & Dragons
• Mattel
• Hasbro
• Raggedy Ann
• CandyCaller

Snacks & Food

• Pop-Tarts
• Jell-O
• Kraft Singles
• Skittles
• Dove Bar
• Dinty Moore
• Cheetos
• Doritos
• Top Ramen
• Cup Noodles
• Spaghetti-O’s
• Famous Amos
• Fig Newtons
• Snickers
• Tang
• Ovaltine
• Kool-Aid
• Hostess
• Stouffer’s
• Rice-A-Roni
• Miracle Whip
• Kraft Dinner
• Pixy Stix
• Reese’s Pieces
• Nestlé Crunch
• Häagen-Dazs
• Godiva
• Mentos
• Del Monte
• NutraSweet
• Dagwood sandwich
• Sour strings

Cereals

• Cap’n Crunch
• Froot Loops
• Corn Flakes
• Cheerios
• Cocoa Puffs
• Frosted Flakes
• Trix
• Count Chocula
• Lucky Charms
• Rice Krispies
• Fruity Pebbles

Drinks

• Diet Coke
• Snapple
• Tab
• Coca-Cola
• Crystal Pepsi
• Pepsi
• Dr Pepper
• 7-Up
• Big Gulp
• Starbucks
• Calistoga water
• Sambuca
• Ketel One
• Folgers

Restaurants & Hotels

• Domino’s Pizza
• McDonald’s
• Burger King
• Denny’s
• IHOP
• Carl’s Jr.
• Chili’s
• Sizzler
• Il Fornaio
• Posh Bagel
• Orange Julius
• Days Inn
• Hyatt
• The Bomb Shelter
• Empire Grill and Tap Room
• Tut’s Hut

Stores

• Costco
• Safeway
• IKEA
• Fry’s Electronics
• CompUSA
• RadioShack
• Kinko’s
• The Gap
• Nordstrom
• Target
• Sears
• JCPenney
• Blockbuster Video
• 7-Eleven
• Neiman Marcus
• Williams-Sonoma
• Crabtree & Evelyn
• Smith & Hawken
• Mrs. Fields
• The Body Shop
• Toys “R” Us
• Franklin Mint
• LensCrafters
• Weird Stuff Warehouse
• Hudson’s Bay
• Gold’s Gym
• U-Haul
• FedEx
• Lucky Mart

Clothing & Gear

• Gore-Tex
• Dockers
• Calvin Klein
• Tommy Hilfiger
• Armani
• Dolce & Gabbana
• Hermès
• J. Crew
• Victoria’s Secret
• Eddie Bauer
• Brooks Brothers
• Banana Republic
• Esprit
• Betsey Johnson
• LA Eyeworks
• Benetton
• Patagonia
• Nike
• Clinique
• NordicTrack
• Soloflex
• Topsy Tail

Household Products

• Kleenex
• Tide
• Joy
• Band-Aid
• Brillo
• Broyhill
• Craftsman
• Whirlpool
• Bic
• Mylar
• Marlboro
• Dream Whip
• Alka-Seltzer
• Prozac
• Robitussin
• Sudafed
• Neutrogena
• Palmolive
• R-Kive
• Suzy Wong bar stool

Plants

• Rhododendron
• Western hemlock
• Japanese maple
• Western red cedar
• Douglas fir
• Salal
• Oregon grape
• Balsam fir
• Kentucky bluegrass
• Kudzu
• Bougainvillea
• Chaparral
• Sago palm
• Iceplant

Airlines

• Delta Air Lines
• United Airlines
• Alaska Airlines
• American Airlines
• Continental Airlines
• Northwest Airlines
• USAir
• British Airways
• Virgin Atlantic
• Alitalia
• Lufthansa
• JAL
• Aeroflot
• Royal Jordanian

Concepts

• Generation X
• Information superhighway
• Turing test
• NASDAQ
• Trepanation
• Shaker furniture
• Pilchuck Glass School
• Cryptofascism
• Eschatology
• Total Quality Management
• Punnett square
• Burgess Shale
• Grok
• Cherenkov radiation
• GATT
• Ebola
• Narcissus
• Object-oriented programming
• Shriner
• Shareware
• Riot Act

Glossary

101 Dalmatians

• Disney’s 1961 animated film about a dog family threatened by villain Cruella de Vil
• Part of the shared childhood canon for American kids in the 70s and 80s via theatrical re-releases and TV broadcasts

1989 Loma Prieta earthquake

• Magnitude 6.9 earthquake that struck the San Francisco Bay Area on October 17, 1989
• Hit during Game 3 of the World Series between the Giants and the A’s
• Collapsed a section of the Bay Bridge and a double-decker freeway in Oakland, killing 63 people
• One of the first natural disasters experienced in real time by a national TV audience

1994 Northridge earthquake

• Magnitude 6.7 earthquake that struck the San Fernando Valley on January 17, 1994
• Caused $20 billion in damage, collapsed freeways, killed 57 people
• Costliest earthquake in U.S. history at the time

2001: A Space Odyssey

• Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi film
• Features HAL 9000, a sentient computer that kills its crew
• Major cultural reference point for artificial intelligence

3DO

• Multimedia gaming console launched October 1993 at $699
• Backed by Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins
• Aimed to combine gaming, music CDs, and video in one box
• Manufactured by Panasonic, Goldstar, and Sanyo under license
• Failed commercially; Nintendo and Sega were competing at $199

7-Eleven

• 24-hour convenience store chain
• Known for Big Gulps, Slurpees, and snack foods

7-Up

• Lemon-lime soda
• Branded itself “The Uncola” in a famous 1970s ad campaign

A

Aaron Spelling

• Television’s most prolific producer
• Created Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990) and Melrose Place (1992)
• His daughter Tori Spelling’s casting on 90210 was a well-known nepotism story

A Clockwork Orange

• Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s dystopian novel
• Follows Alex, a young sociopath who undergoes state-sponsored behavioral conditioning
• Notable for its blend of ultraviolence, classical music, and invented slang (“droogs,” “horrorshow”)
• Cult classic and touchstone for debates about free will and authoritarianism

Acura Legend

• Honda’s flagship luxury sedan, launched 1986
• Part of the Japanese luxury car wave alongside Lexus and Infiniti

Ada

• Programming language developed in the late 1970s for the U.S. Department of Defense
• Named after Ada Lovelace
• Designed for large, mission-critical systems like avionics and weapons control
• Known for strict typing and verbosity
• DoD mandate to use Ada was weakening by the early 90s

Adobe

• Mountain View software company
• Created PostScript and Photoshop (released 1990)
• Essential to the desktop publishing revolution on Macintosh

Aeroflot

• Russian national airline
• Soviet-era reputation for cramped seats, indifferent service, and poor safety
• Struggling to modernize after the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse

Al Gore

• Bill Clinton’s Vice President
• Championed the “information superhighway”
• Helped pass the High Performance Computing Act of 1991, expanding the internet’s backbone

Alan Turing

• British mathematician who cracked the Enigma code in World War II
• Laid the theoretical foundations for computer science and AI (universal machine, Turing test)
• Prosecuted for homosexuality in 1952; died 1954

Alaska Airlines

• Seattle-based regional airline
• Primary carrier of the Pacific Northwest
• Recognizable Eskimo-logo planes at Sea-Tac airport

Aldous Huxley

• British author of Brave New World (1932)
• Depicts a society kept docile through pleasure, genetic engineering, and the drug soma
• Alongside Orwell’s 1984, provided twin literary frameworks for thinking about technology’s dark potential

Alice Cooper

• Shock-rock pioneer (born Vincent Furnier)
• 1970s theatrical live shows featured guillotines, electric chairs, and live snakes
• Cameo in Wayne’s World (1992)

Aliens

• James Cameron’s 1986 sci-fi action sequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien
• Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley returns to the alien-infested planet with Colonial Marines
• Quotable dialogue (“Game over, man!”)

Alitalia

• Italy’s flag carrier airline
• State-owned, perpetually near financial crisis in the early 90s

Alka-Seltzer

• Effervescent antacid tablets
• Famous “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is” jingle (1976)

Alvin Toffler

• Author of Future Shock (1970), predicting the psychological toll of rapid technological change
• “Future shock” entered common usage as a phrase
• Later books: The Third Wave (1980) and Powershift (1990)

AMC Hornet

• Cheap, boxy compact car by American Motors Corporation, 1970-1977
• Also available as a Sportabout wagon

American Airlines

• One of the “Big Three” U.S. carriers alongside United and Delta
• Major hub at Dallas/Fort Worth
• World’s largest airline by passenger traffic in the early 90s
• AAdvantage frequent flyer program (the industry’s first, launched 1981)

Ampex

• Redwood City company that pioneered magnetic tape recording in the 1950s
• Enabled the music recording industry and early video

Andy Warhol

• Pop art icon, died 1987
• Known for silk screens of Campbell’s soup cans, Brillo boxes, and celebrity portraits
• Famous prediction: “everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes”

Ansel Adams

• Photographer known for dramatic black-and-white landscapes of Yosemite and the American West
• Died 1984
• Most widely reproduced art photographs in the country

Anthony Robbins

• Self-help guru prominent in the early 90s
• Known for infomercials, motivational tapes, and fire-walking seminars
• 1991 book Awaken the Giant Within

Apollo 9

• March 1969 NASA mission
• First test of the lunar module in Earth orbit
• Critical step toward the Apollo 11 moon landing

Apple

• In its wilderness years between Steve Jobs’ 1985 departure and 1997 return
• Losing market share to Windows PCs, cycling through CEOs (Sculley, Spindler, Amelio)
• Macintosh became a niche product for graphic designers, educators, and loyalists

Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp.

• Landmark lawsuit filed by Apple in 1988
• Alleged Microsoft’s Windows copied the Macintosh’s GUI “look and feel”
• Apple had itself adapted these concepts from Xerox PARC
• Apple lost; final appeal rejected in 1994

Apple LaserWriter

• Apple’s laser printer launched in 1985
• Used Adobe’s PostScript; cost $6,995
• Together with Aldus PageMaker and the Macintosh, created the desktop publishing revolution

Apple Lisa

• Apple’s 1983 computer, named after Steve Jobs’ daughter
• First commercial personal computer with a GUI and mouse
• Commercial disaster at $9,995
• Thousands of unsold units buried in a Utah landfill

Apple Newton

• Apple’s pioneering PDA, launched August 1993
• Handwriting recognition was infamously bad, lampooned by Doonesbury and The Simpsons
• Priced at $699; cancelled 1998

Apple Worldwide Developers Conference

• Apple’s annual developer event (WWDC)
• In the early 90s, focused on keeping developers committed to Macintosh as Windows gained share

Armani

• Giorgio Armani’s Italian fashion house
• Unstructured jackets and sleek suits redefined 1980s menswear
• A/X Armani Exchange line launched in 1991

Arnold Schwarzenegger

• Austrian-born bodybuilder turned action movie star
• Peak dominance with Terminator 2 (1991)
• 1993 film Last Action Hero was a notable flop

AT&T

• Telecommunications giant broken up from its Bell System monopoly in 1984
• Split into AT&T Long Lines and seven regional “Baby Bell” companies
• Ran visionary “You Will” ad campaigns in the early 90s predicting video calls and tablet computers

Atari

• Pioneering video game company
• 2600 console (1977) defined home gaming for a generation
• Catastrophic 1983 video game crash; unsold E.T. cartridges buried in a New Mexico landfill
• By the early 90s, making the Jaguar console in a failed attempt to compete with Sega and Nintendo

Ayn Rand

• Russian-American novelist and philosopher
• Wrote The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957)
• Objectivist philosophy: rational self-interest as virtue, government regulation as tyranny
• Influential in libertarian-leaning Silicon Valley circles

B

Balsam fir

• Fragrant North American evergreen tree
• Most commonly associated with Christmas trees

Banana Republic

• Gap-owned clothing retailer
• Started in the late 70s as a quirky surplus store selling safari clothes
• By the early 90s, reinvented as an upscale business-casual brand

Band-Aid

• Johnson & Johnson’s adhesive bandage, introduced 1920
• Brand name became the generic American term for any small adhesive bandage

Barbie

• Mattel’s fashion doll, introduced 1959
• By the early 90s, selling over a billion dollars annually
• Cultural lightning rod for debates about gender stereotypes and body image

Barbarella

• Roger Vadim’s campy 1968 sci-fi film starring Jane Fonda
• Cult classic and shorthand for retro-futuristic kitsch

Barbra Streisand

• Singer, actress, and director
• One of the most powerful women in Hollywood by the early 90s
• 1994 concert tour was her first in 27 years

Barney & Friends

• Purple dinosaur children’s show, premiered on PBS in April 1992
• Saccharine “I Love You” song inspired adult backlash and “Barney bashing” jokes on the early internet

Barry Diller

• Media mogul who ran Paramount Pictures and launched the Fox Broadcasting Company
• Took over QVC in 1992; pivoted into internet ventures by the mid-90s

BART

• Bay Area Rapid Transit system, opened 1972
• Connects San Francisco to Oakland and East Bay suburbs via underwater tube
• Did not extend to Silicon Valley in the early 90s

Battlestar Galactica

• 1978 ABC sci-fi series about humans fleeing robotic Cylons across space
• Inspired by Star Wars; cancelled after one season

Baywatch

• Lifeguard drama, premiered 1989
• Cancelled by NBC, returned in syndication in 1991
• Became the most-watched TV show in the world, ~1.1 billion weekly viewers
• Starred David Hasselhoff; later added Pamela Anderson

Bellevue, Washington

• Affluent suburb across Lake Washington from Seattle
• Home to many Microsoft employees in the early 90s

Bellingham, Washington

• Small college town (Western Washington University) near the Canadian border
• About 90 miles north of Seattle

Benetton

• Italian clothing company
• “United Colors of Benetton” ad campaigns used shocking imagery (dying AIDS patient, blood-covered newborn)

Bessie Smith

• “Empress of the Blues”
• Powerful recordings in the 1920s and 30s
• Died in a car accident in 1937 at age 43

Betsey Johnson

• American fashion designer known for colorful, punk-inflected designs
• Tradition of doing a cartwheel at the end of her runway shows

Beverly Hills, 90210

• Aaron Spelling teen drama, premiered on Fox in October 1990
• Cast: Jason Priestley, Shannen Doherty, Luke Perry, Tori Spelling

Bewitched

• 1964-72 ABC sitcom about a witch who marries a mortal advertising executive
• Featured Gladys Kravitz, star Elizabeth Montgomery

Bic

• French company making disposable pens, lighters, and razors

Big Gulp

• 7-Eleven’s oversized fountain drink, introduced 1976 at 32 ounces
• Later expanded to the 64-ounce Double Gulp

Bill Gates

• Microsoft co-founder and CEO
• By 1994, net worth crossing $9 billion
• Later attracted attention from the Justice Department’s antitrust division

Biosphere 2

• 3.14-acre sealed glass-and-steel structure in the Arizona desert
• Eight “biospherians” lived in a self-contained ecosystem from September 1991 to September 1993
• Oxygen levels dropped dangerously, food ran short, crew split into factions

Blockbuster Video

• Video rental chain with over 3,000 stores by the early 90s
• Notorious $3 late fees
• Later destroyed by Netflix and streaming

Bloom County

• Berkeley Breathed’s satirical newspaper comic strip, 1980-1989
• Characters included Opus the penguin, Bill the Cat, and Milo Bloom

Bobby Sherman

• Late-60s/early-70s teen idol pop singer
• By the early 90s, retired from entertainment and become a paramedic

Boca Raton, Florida

• Where IBM developed the original IBM PC in 1981
• IBM chose an Intel processor and Microsoft’s MS-DOS, reshaping the tech industry

Boeing

• Aerospace giant headquartered in Seattle (until 2001 move to Chicago)
• 747 jumbo jet, introduced 1969, was an icon of long-distance air travel

Boris and Natasha

• 1992 live-action film based on the Rocky and Bullwinkle villains
• Went straight to video

Bougainvillea

• Flowering tropical vine native to South America
• Papery bracts in magenta, purple, orange, or white
• Common sight in Southern California

Brenda Laurel

• Pioneering researcher in virtual reality and human-computer interaction
• Worked at Atari, Activision, and Interval Research Corporation
• 1991 book Computers as Theatre
• Later founded Purple Moon, a company making video games for girls

Brillo

• Steel wool soap pad for scrubbing pots, manufactured since 1913
• Packaging became famous via Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box sculptures (1964)

British Airways

• United Kingdom’s flag carrier airline
• Privatized in 1987; one of the world’s most profitable carriers by the early 90s

Broderbund

• San Rafael, California software company, founded 1980
• Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? (1985), The Print Shop (1984), Myst (1993)

Brooks Brothers

• America’s oldest clothing retailer, founded 1818
• Known for button-down oxford shirts and traditional suits

Broyhill

• North Carolina-based furniture manufacturer
• Moderately priced, staple of middle-class American homes

Buck Rogers

• 1979-81 NBC sci-fi series
• 20th-century astronaut wakes up 500 years in the future
• Disco-era aesthetics and a robot named Twiki

Bugs Bunny

• Warner Bros.’ wisecracking rabbit
• Part of the Looney Tunes cast alongside Marvin the Martian, the Tasmanian Devil, and the Road Runner

Buick Skylark

• Mid-size GM sedan, 1953-1998
• By the early 90s, a forgettable compact car

Burger King

• McDonald’s main rival in fast-food hamburgers
• Known for “Have It Your Way” slogan and flame-broiled Whoppers

Burgess Shale

• Fossil bed in the Canadian Rockies, British Columbia
• Preserved soft-bodied Cambrian creatures (505 million years ago) like Anomalocaris and Hallucigenia
• Subject of Stephen Jay Gould’s 1989 book Wonderful Life

Burlingame, California

• Peninsula city between San Francisco and Silicon Valley
• Close to SFO airport

Burt Reynolds

• Top box-office draw for five consecutive years (1978-82)
• Famous for his Trans Am in Smokey and the Bandit and his Cosmopolitan centerfold
• By the early 90s, bankrupt and in a tabloid-dominating divorce from Loni Anderson

C

C++

• Object-oriented programming language developed by Bjarne Stroustrup at Bell Labs in the early 1980s
• Dominant language for commercial software development by the early 90s
• Powerful, complex, and unforgiving

Cablevision

• Cable television provider serving parts of the northeastern U.S.
• Owned by the Dolan family

Calistoga water

• Mineral water from Calistoga, a town at the northern end of Napa Valley
• Northern California regional brand

CalTrain

• Commuter rail line running 77 miles from San Francisco through Silicon Valley to San Jose and Gilroy
• Diesel-powered in the early 90s

Calvin Klein

• American fashion designer with minimalist aesthetic and provocative ads
• 1992 underwear campaign featuring Mark Wahlberg
• Unisex fragrance CK One (1994)

Camille Paglia

• Self-described “dissident feminist”
• 1990 book Sexual Personae
• Attacked mainstream feminism, championed Madonna, defended pornography

Candlestick Park

• San Francisco’s windswept stadium, home to the 49ers and Giants
• Where the Beatles played their last concert (1966)
• Not replaced until the 2010s

CandyCaller

• Novelty plastic toy shaped like a telephone, filled with candies
• Cheap impulse buy found at checkout counters in the 80s and early 90s

Canon

• Japanese company known for cameras, laser printers, and copiers
• EOS camera system competed with Nikon; laser printers rivaled HP’s LaserJets

Cap’n Crunch

• Sugary breakfast cereal
• A toy whistle from the box produced a 2600 Hz tone that could hack AT&T’s phone system
• Phone phreaker John Draper took the alias “Captain Crunch”

Carl’s Jr.

• West Coast fast-food chain headquartered in Anaheim, California
• Known for charbroiled burgers
• Didn’t exist east of the Rockies

Cary Grant

• Old Hollywood leading man
• Starred in North by Northwest, Charade, The Philadelphia Story
• Retired from acting in 1966, died 1986

Casper the Friendly Ghost

• Harvey Comics character dating back to 1945
• A gentle ghost who just wanted to make friends but kept scaring people
• 1995 live-action film

Cats Magazine

• Publication for cat enthusiasts (likely Cat Fancy, 1965-2015)
• Example of niche, pre-internet specialist magazines

CD-ROM

• Optical disc format; hot new technology in 1993-94
• Enabled multimedia encyclopedias (Encarta), games, and “interactive” content
• CD-ROM drives rapidly becoming standard in new PCs

CES (trade show)

• Consumer Electronics Show, held annually in Las Vegas
• Where companies unveiled CD-ROM products, early PDAs, and digital cameras

Chaparral

• Dense, shrubby vegetation covering California’s coastal hills
• Composed of manzanita, ceanothus, and sage
• Periodically burns in devastating wildfires

Charlie Brown

• Protagonist of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts comic strip
• Also referenced via Pig-Pen
• Annual TV specials (A Charlie Brown Christmas, It’s the Great Pumpkin)

Charlie’s Angels

• 1976-81 ABC detective show featuring three female private investigators
• Starred Kate Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, and Jaclyn Smith

Charlton Heston

• Star of Ben-Hur (1959), Planet of the Apes (1968), Soylent Green (1973), The Omega Man (1971)
• Later known for conservative political activism and NRA presidency (1998)

Cheerios

• General Mills’ oat cereal, introduced 1941
• Best-selling cereal in America by the early 90s

Cheetos

• Frito-Lay’s bright-orange cheese-flavored snacks, introduced 1948
• Infamous for leaving orange dust on fingers and keyboards

Cherenkov radiation

• Blue glow emitted when charged particles travel through a medium faster than light speed in that medium
• Commonly seen in pools surrounding nuclear reactors
• Named after Soviet physicist Pavel Cherenkov (1934)

Chet Baker

• West Coast cool jazz trumpeter and singer
• Star in the 1950s before heroin addiction ravaged his career
• Died 1988, falling from an Amsterdam hotel window
• Bruce Weber’s 1988 documentary Let’s Get Lost

Chili’s

• Casual dining chain founded in Dallas, 1975
• Known for Southwestern-themed decor and baby back ribs

Christy Turlington

• One of the original 90s supermodels, alongside Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, and Claudia Schiffer
• Face of Calvin Klein’s Eternity fragrance

Claris

• Apple’s software subsidiary, spun off 1987, reabsorbed 1998
• Made FileMaker Pro, ClarisWorks, and MacWrite

Claudia Schiffer

• German supermodel chosen by Karl Lagerfeld for a Chanel campaign in 1989
• On the cover of over 500 magazines

Clinique

• Estee Lauder-owned skincare brand, launched 1968
• Positioned as the “scientific” approach to beauty
• Famous three-step skin care system

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

• Steven Spielberg’s 1977 film about contact with alien visitors
• Treated extraterrestrial contact with wonder rather than fear
• Iconic five-note musical communication motif

CNN

• Ted Turner’s Cable News Network, launched 1980
• First 24-hour news channel
• Proved its value during 1991 Gulf War with live coverage from Baghdad

COBOL

• Common Business-Oriented Language, created 1959 largely through Grace Hopper’s efforts
• Considered archaic by the early 90s but still ran most banking, insurance, and government systems
• Would become relevant again during the Y2K panic

Coca-Cola

• World’s most recognized brand
• Disastrous 1985 “New Coke” reformulation and hasty retreat to “Coca-Cola Classic”

Cocoa Puffs

• General Mills’ chocolate-flavored cereal
• Mascot Sonny the Cuckoo Bird: “I’m cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!”

Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

• Lakeside resort town in northern Idaho, about 30 miles east of Spokane
• Near the Aryan Nations compound in Hayden Lake in the early 90s

COMDEX

• Computer Dealers’ Exhibition, held annually in November in Las Vegas
• At its peak drew over 200,000 attendees; largest trade show in America

Compaq

• PC clone maker that reverse-engineered IBM’s BIOS in 1982
• Surpassed IBM in PC sales by the early 90s
• Acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2002

CompUSA

• Big-box computer retail chain
• Where consumers bought PCs, software, and peripherals before online shopping

Conde Nast Traveler

• Upscale travel magazine launched 1987
• Gorgeous photography of luxury destinations

Continental Airlines

• Major U.S. airline, went through two bankruptcies in the 1980s
• Turnaround under CEO Gordon Bethune in 1994
• Merged with United Airlines in 2012

CorelDraw

• Vector graphics software by Canadian company Corel, first released 1989
• Popular Windows alternative to Adobe Illustrator

Corn Flakes

• Kellogg’s original breakfast cereal, invented 1894
• Created as part of a bland diet at the Battle Creek Sanitarium

Cosmopolitan

• Women’s magazine under editor Helen Gurley Brown (1965-1997)
• Selling millions of copies monthly by the early 90s

Costco

• Membership warehouse club founded 1983 in Kirkland, Washington
• Bulk buying at low prices

Count Chocula

• General Mills’ chocolate cereal with a vampire mascot
• Part of the “Monster Cereals” line alongside Franken Berry and Boo Berry

Courtney Love

• Lead singer of Hole and Kurt Cobain’s wife
• Hole’s Live Through This (1994) was critically acclaimed
• Released days after Cobain’s death in April 1994

Crabtree & Evelyn

• Luxury bath, body, and home fragrance company, founded 1972
• English-garden-themed soaps, lotions, and candles

Craftsman

• Sears’ house brand of hand tools and power tools
• Famous lifetime warranty

Cray

• Company founded by Seymour Cray building famous supercomputers
• Distinctive C-shaped Cray-1 (1976)
• Used for weather modeling, nuclear simulations, and code-breaking

Crunchy Frog

• Monty Python’s Flying Circus sketch (1972)
• Health inspector confronts a chocolate maker about revolting literal fillings
• Python references were common currency in programming circles; the Python language is named after the troupe

Cryptofascism

• Accusation that someone harbors secret fascist sympathies behind a respectable facade
• Term from political theory

Crystal Pepsi

• Pepsi’s clear cola launched early 1993
• Based on the “clear products” consumer trend
• Pulled from shelves by 1994; famous product flop

Cup Noodles

• Nissin’s instant noodles in a styrofoam cup, introduced in the U.S. in 1973
• Just add hot water

Cupertino, California

• Apple’s headquarters city in the Santa Clara Valley
• Modest ranch houses and strip malls in the early 90s

Curly Sue

• Saccharine 1991 John Hughes comedy
• Hughes’ last directorial effort; critically savaged

D

Daewoo

• Korean automaker trying to crack the American market in the early 90s with ultra-cheap cars

Dagwood sandwich

• Towering, multi-layered sandwich named after Dagwood Bumstead from the Blondie comic strip

Daly City, California

• Densely packed suburb immediately south of San Francisco
• Hillsides of identical pastel houses immortalized in Malvina Reynolds’ 1962 folk song

Daniel Day-Lewis

• Intensely committed method actor
• First Oscar for My Left Foot (1989), followed by The Last of the Mohicans (1992) and In the Name of the Father (1993)

Datsun

• Former brand name of Nissan in North America, phased out 1981-1986

Davey and Goliath

• Stop-motion animated Lutheran children’s show, 1961-1973
• Produced by Art Clokey (of Gumby fame)

David Bowie

• In a relatively fallow commercial period in the early 90s (Tin Machine, Black Tie White Noise 1993)
• Legacy as rock’s great shape-shifter firmly established
• Ziggy Stardust persona and androgynous futurism

David Geffen

• Entertainment mogul who co-founded DreamWorks SKG in October 1994 with Spielberg and Katzenberg
• Built Asylum Records and Geffen Records (home to Nirvana and Guns N’ Roses)

Days Inn

• Budget hotel chain founded 1970
• Yellow sunburst sign at every interstate exit

Del Monte

• Canned fruit and vegetable company headquartered in San Francisco

Delta Air Lines

• One of America’s largest airlines
• Lost over $1 billion between 1991 and 1993

Denny’s

• 24-hour diner chain, home of the Grand Slam breakfast
• Subject of a major racial discrimination lawsuit in 1993

Dictaphone

• Voice-recording device brand synonymous with executive dictation since the early 20th century
• Symbol of pre-digital office technology

Diet Coke

• Launched 1982
• Outselling regular Coke among the white-collar workforce by the early 90s

Dilbert

• Scott Adams’ comic strip about an engineer trapped in corporate absurdity
• Launched 1989; exploding in popularity by 1993-94
• Adams himself had worked at Pacific Bell

[Dinty Moore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinty_Moore_(brand)

• Hormel’s canned beef stew, sold since 1935
• Microwaveable, eaten straight from the container

Dirty Harry

• Clint Eastwood’s 1971 San Francisco vigilante cop film
• “Do you feel lucky, punk?” became one of the most quoted lines in cinema

Dockers

• Levi’s casual khaki pants brand, launched 1986
• Unofficial uniform of male business-casual workers in the early 90s

Dolby THX

• Lucasfilm’s cinema sound quality certification system, created 1983
• Deep rumbling “the audience is listening” trailer

Dolce & Gabbana

• Italian luxury fashion house founded 1985
• Sexualized, Mediterranean-glamour aesthetic by the early 90s

Domino’s Pizza

• Delivery pizza chain famous for its 30-minutes-or-less guarantee
• Dropped the guarantee in 1993 after accident-related lawsuits

Donna Karan

• Fashion designer; DKNY label launched 1989
• Influential “seven easy pieces” approach to women’s workwear

Doom

• id Software’s landmark first-person shooter, released December 1993
• Distributed as shareware; spread through office networks
• Triggered the first major wave of moral panic about violent video games

Doritos

• Frito-Lay’s flavored tortilla chips
• Nacho Cheese and Cool Ranch were the dominant flavors

Douglas fir

• Towering conifer dominating Pacific Northwest forests, up to 330 feet tall
• The region’s most commercially important timber species

Dove Bar

• Premium chocolate-coated ice cream bar

Dr Pepper

• 23-flavor soda, around since 1885
• Existed outside the Coke-vs-Pepsi binary

Dr. Dobb’s Journal

• Programming magazine, founded 1976
• Essential reading for serious coders by the early 90s

Dr. Faustus

• 1967 film of Christopher Marlowe’s play about a scholar who sells his soul for knowledge and power
• Starred Richard Burton with Elizabeth Taylor

Dr. Seuss

• Theodor Geisel, children’s book author, died September 1991
• The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

Dream Whip

• Kraft’s powdered whipped topping mix
• Reconstituted with milk and vanilla; shelf-stable simulacrum of whipped cream

Dungeons & Dragons

• Tabletop role-playing game created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson in 1974
• Weathered the Satanic Panic of the 80s
• Concepts (hit points, experience levels, character classes) became foundational grammar of video game design

Duran Duran

• British new-wave band; glossy MTV-era videos for “Hungry Like the Wolf” and “Rio”
• Staging a modest comeback with Wedding Album by 1993

E

Ebola

• Hemorrhagic fever virus identified in 1976
• Surged into Western consciousness in the early 90s (1989 Reston, Virginia incident)
• Richard Preston’s The Hot Zone published 1994

Eddie Bauer

• Seattle-based outdoor clothing brand
• Expanding into malls in the early 90s
• Co-branding deal with Ford (Eddie Bauer Edition Explorer, 1991)

Edwin Abbott

• Victorian schoolmaster who wrote Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884)
• Novella about a two-dimensional world; beloved geek parable about perceiving dimensions beyond your own

El Camino Real

• Historic road running the length of the San Francisco Peninsula
• Originally the Spanish colonial route linking California’s missions
• By the early 90s, a four-lane strip lined with strip malls and tech offices

Electronic Arts

• Video game publisher founded by Trip Hawkins in 1982
• Known for sports titles (Madden NFL, FIFA)
• Headquartered in San Mateo

Elizabeth Montgomery

• Star of Bewitched (1964-72)
• Iconic nose-twitch spell-casting
• Died of cancer in May 1995

Elle Macpherson

• Australian supermodel known as “The Body”
• Record five Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue covers

Elvis Presley

• The King of Rock and Roll, dead since August 1977
• 1992 U.S. postage stamp vote (young Elvis vs. old Elvis); stamp issued January 1993

Empire Grill and Tap Room

• Restaurant and bar in Palo Alto
• Part of the local dining scene in the early 90s

English Beat

• Birmingham ska and new wave band, 1978-1983
• Songs like “Mirror in the Bathroom” and “Save It for Later”
• Part of the 2 Tone ska revival alongside The Specials and Madness

ENIAC

• Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, built 1945 at the University of Pennsylvania
• Generally regarded as the first general-purpose electronic computer
• Weighed 30 tons, used 18,000 vacuum tubes

Entertainment Tonight

• Nightly syndicated celebrity news show, on the air since 1981
• Hosted by John Tesh and Mary Hart in the early 90s

Eschatology

• Branch of theology concerned with final events of history and humanity’s ultimate fate
• Increasingly mainstream as the year 2000 approached

Esprit

• San Francisco-based casual clothing brand, founded 1968
• Mall staple in the 80s and early 90s; already declining by 1993-94

Eugene, Oregon

• College town (University of Oregon) on I-5 between Portland and California
• Known for countercultural reputation and as the birthplace of Nike

Ewoks

• Teddy-bear-like creatures from Return of the Jedi (1983)
• Helped defeat the Empire using sticks and rocks
• Split Star Wars fandom between those who found them charming and those who didn’t

F

Fabio Lanzoni

• Long-haired Italian model who graced hundreds of romance novel covers
• “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” spokesman role in 1994

Fall of the Berlin Wall

• November 9, 1989
• Symbolized the end of the Cold War

Family Circus

• Bil Keane’s single-panel newspaper comic about a suburban family, running since 1960
• Aggressively wholesome humor

Family Ties

• 1982-89 NBC sitcom starring Michael J. Fox as Alex P. Keaton
• Cast included Justine Bateman and Tina Yothers

Famous Amos

• Chocolate chip cookie brand founded by Wally Amos in 1975
• By the early 90s, sold to corporate owners and available in every vending machine

Fantasy Island

• 1977-84 ABC series
• Guests lived out fantasies on a tropical island overseen by Mr. Roarke (Ricardo Montalban)
• Sidekick Tattoo’s catchphrase: “The plane! The plane!”

FedEx

• Overnight delivery service founded by Fred Smith in 1971
• Brand name became a verb
• Essential for pre-email business logistics

Ferrari

• Italian supercar manufacturer
• Ultimate automotive fantasy object

Fig Newtons

• Nabisco’s fig-filled cookies, first produced 1891
• Named after Newton, Massachusetts

Fisher-Price

• Toy company founded 1930
• Known for brightly colored toddler toys: Little People, rotary telephone on wheels, stacking rings

Flatland

• Edwin Abbott’s 1884 novella about a two-dimensional world inhabited by geometric shapes
• A parable about the limits of perception and higher dimensions

Flipper

• 1964-67 NBC series about a bottlenose dolphin
• Essentially “Lassie but with a dolphin”

Folgers

• Mass-market coffee brand
• Jingle: “The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup”
• Represented pre-Starbucks American coffee culture

Ford Model T

• Henry Ford’s revolutionary automobile, 1908-1927
• Assembly-line manufacturing made car ownership accessible to the middle class

Ford Taurus

• America’s best-selling car from 1992 to 1996
• Rounded, aerodynamic, deliberately inoffensive sedan

Fortran

• One of the oldest programming languages, developed by IBM in 1957
• Still widely used in scientific computing in the early 90s

Frank Sinatra

• Still performing at age 78 in 1993-94
• Final studio album Duets released November 1993

Franklin Mint

• Collectibles company selling commemorative plates, die-cast models, and replica coins
• Ads were a fixture of daytime TV and Sunday newspaper supplements

Frisbee

• Flying disc toy manufactured by Wham-O since 1957
• Staple of outdoor recreation on college and tech company campuses

Froot Loops

• Kellogg’s fruit-flavored cereal rings with Toucan Sam mascot
• All loops taste the same despite different colors

Frosted Flakes

• Kellogg’s sugar-coated corn flakes
• Tony the Tiger mascot: “They’re Gr-r-reat!” since 1952

Fruity Pebbles

• Post’s Flintstones-branded cereal
• Rice-based, artificially colored, very sweet

Fry’s Electronics

• Silicon Valley electronics superstore chain, founded 1985
• Themed locations (Aztec temple in Palo Alto, Wild West in Sunnyvale)
• Closed permanently in 2021

G

Gak

• Nickelodeon’s branded slime, introduced 1992
• Neon-colored goop sold in plastic containers

Gallagher

• Prop comedian famous for smashing watermelons with the “Sledge-O-Matic”

Game Boy

• Nintendo’s handheld console, launched 1989 with pack-in game Tetris
• Sold tens of millions of units
• Pea-green dot-matrix screen

Garfield

• Jim Davis’s lasagna-loving, Monday-hating cartoon cat, launched 1978
• One of the most merchandised characters in the world by the early 90s

Gary Numan

• British synth-pop pioneer
• “Cars” (1979) and “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” were among the first electronic pop crossover hits

GATT

• General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
• Uruguay Round negotiations 1986-1994 led to the creation of the WTO in January 1995

Gene Roddenberry

• Creator of Star Trek, died October 1991
• Star Trek: The Next Generation still airing during 1993-94 (ended May 1994)

General Magic

• Secretive Apple spinoff founded 1990
• Working on a handheld personal communicator OS that anticipated smartphones by 15 years
• Talent included Tony Fadell (iPod) and Andy Rubin (Android)
• Products failed commercially at 1994 launch

Generation X

• Demographic cohort born roughly 1961-1981
• Label popularized by Douglas Coupland’s 1991 novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

Geo Metro

• Tiny subcompact sold under GM’s Geo brand, 1989-1997
• Essentially a rebadged Suzuki Swift; 50+ MPG
• One of the cheapest cars in America

George Balanchine

• Russian-born choreographer who co-founded the New York City Ballet
• Died 1983
• Revolutionized ballet with neoclassical style

George Lucas

• Creator of Star Wars and Indiana Jones
• ILM headquartered in San Rafael
• Leading the digital effects revolution (Jurassic Park 1993, Forrest Gump 1994)

Getting Past OK

• Richard Brodie’s 1995 self-help book
• Written by a former Microsoft programmer who was the original author of Microsoft Word

Ghostbusters

• Ivan Reitman’s 1984 sci-fi comedy starring Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Harold Ramis
• Stay Puft Marshmallow Man
• Grossed nearly $300 million worldwide

GI Joe

• Hasbro’s military action figure franchise, relaunched 1982 as 3.75-inch figures
• Accompanying Marvel comic and TV series (“knowing is half the battle”)

Gilligan’s Island

• 1964-67 CBS sitcom about seven castaways stranded after a “three-hour tour”
• Only 98 episodes but rerun relentlessly

GoBot

• Tonka’s transforming robot toys, launched 1983
• Less prestigious rival to Hasbro’s Transformers

Godiva

• Belgian chocolatier, founded 1926
• Gold-boxed assortments were the default “fancy” chocolate gift

Gold’s Gym

• Bodybuilding gym chain founded in Venice Beach, 1965
• Made famous by Arnold Schwarzenegger in Pumping Iron (1977)

Gore-Tex

• Waterproof, breathable fabric patented 1969
• Standard material for outdoor jackets in the Pacific Northwest

Grace Jones

• Jamaican-American model, singer, and actress
• Androgynous, fierce 80s icon
• Roles in Conan the Destroyer and A View to a Kill (1984)

Grateful Dead

• San Francisco psychedelic rock band, still touring in the early 90s (Jerry Garcia died August 1995)
• Tape-trading community was a precursor to digital file sharing and open-source philosophy

Grok

• Term coined by Robert Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
• Means to understand something so thoroughly you merge with it
• Widely adopted as programming jargon

Groom Lake

• Better known as Area 51
• Classified U.S. Air Force facility in the Nevada desert
• Magnet for UFO conspiracy theories, fueled by Bob Lazar’s 1989 claims

H

Haagen-Dazs

• Premium ice cream brand with a fabricated Scandinavian-sounding name
• Invented in the Bronx in the 1960s

Habitrail

• Modular hamster habitat made of interconnected plastic tubes
• Manufactured by Hagen since the 1960s

Hacky Sack

• Small sand-filled footbag kicked in a circle
• Ubiquitous on college campuses and in tech company parking lots

Half Moon Bay, California

• Small coastal town on the foggy Pacific side of the San Francisco Peninsula
• About 30 miles from Silicon Valley; still rural in the early 90s

Handbook of Highway Engineering

• Technical reference book by Robert Fulton Baker on road design and construction

Hanna-Barbera

• Animation studio behind The Flintstones, Scooby-Doo, The Jetsons
• Acquired by Turner Broadcasting in 1991

Happy Days

• 1974-1984 ABC sitcom set in 1950s Milwaukee
• Featured Ron Howard and Henry Winkler as the Fonz

Hasbro

• Toy conglomerate; absorbed Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers
• Owned Monopoly, Risk, Clue, and most major board games

Heather Locklear

• Star of Dynasty and Melrose Place (1992)

Henry Kissinger

• Nixon’s Secretary of State and architect of Cold War realpolitik
• Running a consulting firm in the early 90s

Herb Alpert

• Trumpeter and A&M Records co-founder
• Tijuana Brass and Brasil '66 defined a breezy 1960s lounge sound

Hermes

• French luxury house founded 1837
• Known for silk scarves, leather goods, and the Birkin bag

Hewlett-Packard

• Founded in a Palo Alto garage in 1939
• Known for printers, calculators, and workstations
• Revered for the paternalistic “HP Way” management philosophy
• ~$20 billion company by 1993

Hillary Clinton

• First Lady from January 1993
• Headed the administration’s health care reform task force

Hollywood Squares

• Celebrity tic-tac-toe game show, various incarnations from 1966 onward

Honda Civic

• Sensible, fuel-efficient compact car
• Everywhere in Silicon Valley parking lots

Hostess

• Snack cake company behind Twinkies, Ho Hos, and Ding Dongs
• Bankruptcy came in 2012

Hot Wheels

• Mattel’s die-cast toy cars, introduced 1968
• Orange plastic track and loop-the-loops

Hudson’s Bay

• Canada’s oldest department store chain, founded as a fur-trading company in 1670

Hulk Hogan

• Professional wrestling’s biggest star of the 1980s
• Crossed into mainstream with movies and TV

Human League

• British synth-pop band
• “Don’t You Want Me” hit #1 in the US in 1982

Hyatt

• Upscale hotel chain
• Hyatt Rickeys in Palo Alto was a Silicon Valley landmark

I

I Gopher You

• Old cartoon, likely the source of “chipmunks in the canning factory”
• One of many vintage animated shorts rerun on television in the 70s and 80s

I Love Lucy

• 1951-57 CBS sitcom starring Lucille Ball
• Still in heavy syndication in the early 90s

IATSE

• International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees
• Entertainment industry’s main labor union for crew (grips, electricians, set builders)

IBM

• In freefall by 1993, posting an $8 billion loss – largest in American corporate history at the time
• Lou Gerstner arrived from RJR Nabisco to attempt a turnaround

IBM PS/2

• IBM’s PC line launched 1987
• Introduced the PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports
• Failed attempt to reassert control over the PC market

IBM Selectric

• Iconic electric typewriter with spinning “golf ball” typeball, introduced 1961
• Gold standard of office typing for two decades

Iceplant

• Succulent ground cover from South Africa with magenta or yellow flowers
• Ubiquitous along California highways; now recognized as invasive

ID magazine

• British style and fashion magazine founded 1980
• Distinctive cover photos of subjects winking with one eye closed

IHOP

• International House of Pancakes
• 24-hour chain offering cheap American breakfast food

IKEA

• Swedish flat-pack furniture retailer
• First U.S. store opened 1985; aggressively expanding in North America by the early 90s

Il Fornaio

• Upscale Italian restaurant chain, founded 1972
• Palo Alto location was a Silicon Valley power-lunch spot

Infiniti J30

• Nissan’s curvaceous luxury sedan introduced 1993
• Part of the Japanese luxury car boom (Lexus, Infiniti, Acura)

Information superhighway

• Buzzy metaphor popularized by Al Gore for the coming computer network
• Dominant way politicians and media described what would become “the internet” in 1993-94

Inside Macintosh

• Apple’s multi-volume technical reference for Mac programming
• Over two dozen volumes; the bible for every Mac developer in the pre-internet era

Intel

• Santa Clara chipmaker; launched the Pentium processor in March 1993
• “Intel Inside” branding campaign turned a component maker into a household name
• 1994 Pentium floating-point division bug was one of the first internet-amplified tech scandals

Intel 486

• Workhorse processor of the early 90s, released 1989
• Standard “good computer” before Pentiums became affordable
• 486SX vs. 486DX (with math coprocessor) was a meaningful distinction

Interstate 5

• Main north-south freeway, 1,381 miles from the Canadian border to Mexico
• Runs through Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, and Los Angeles

Interval Research

• Paul Allen’s Palo Alto research lab, founded 1992
• Closed in 2000 with little to show for it

Iron Rose competition

• Women’s bodybuilding or fitness competition
• Likely a regional NPC or IFBB event

Itchy and Scratchy

• Ultra-violent cartoon-within-a-cartoon from The Simpsons
• Mouse and cat inflict baroque mayhem on each other

J

J. Crew

• Preppy American clothing brand
• Thick, glossy mail-order catalogs defining aspirational East Coast casual style

J.R.R. Tolkien

• Author of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit
• Foundational reading for the generation who grew up on Dungeons & Dragons

JAL

• Japan Airlines, flag carrier connecting Silicon Valley to Tokyo
• Flights between SFO and Narita were packed with tech businesspeople

Japanese maple

• Ornamental tree with delicate leaves that turn red in autumn
• Popular in Pacific Northwest landscaping

Jarts

• Metal-tipped lawn darts banned in the US in 1988 after children were killed
• Banned in Canada in 1989

JCPenney

• Department store chain founded 1902
• Over 1,200 stores in the early 90s

Jell-O

• Gelatin dessert introduced 1897
• Bill Cosby was the longtime spokesperson; Jell-O shots were a college party staple

Jeopardy!

• Alex Trebek’s quiz show, running in syndicated revival since 1984
• Aired at 7 PM in most markets

Jim Morrison

• The Doors frontman, died in Paris 1971 at age 27
• Oliver Stone’s 1991 biopic starring Val Kilmer reignited interest

Joan Baez

• Folk singer and activist
• Performed at the March on Washington (1963) and Woodstock (1969)

Joey Heatherton

• 1960s-70s entertainer, dancer, and actress
• Frequent guest on variety shows and Bob Hope’s USO specials

John Lennon

• Beatle, murdered December 1980 outside the Dakota
• References to John and Yoko Ono evoke 60s-70s radicalism

John Madden

• NFL commentator and former Oakland Raiders coach
• Madden NFL video game series launched by EA Sports in 1988

John Sculley

• Former Pepsi executive recruited to run Apple in 1983
• Pushed out Steve Jobs in 1985; forced out himself in 1993 after Newton PDA flopped

John Wayne Bobbitt

• Wife Lorena severed his penis in June 1993
• Most talked-about tabloid story of the year

Joseph McCarthy

• Wisconsin senator whose anti-communist witch hunts in the 1950s ruined lives and careers
• “McCarthyism” became shorthand for ideological persecution

[Joy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_(dishwashing_liquid)

• Procter & Gamble dish soap brand
• Recognizable yellow bottle

[Jurassic Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic_Park_(film)

• Spielberg’s June 1993 blockbuster
• First truly convincing CGI creatures in cinema (created by ILM)
• “It’s a UNIX system – I know this!” scene featured an actual SGI file browser

Justine Bateman

• Played Mallory Keaton on Family Ties (1982-89)
• Career had cooled by the early 90s

K

Kennedy assassination

• November 1963 assassination in Dallas
• Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991) reignited public fascination

Kentucky bluegrass

• Grass species forming manicured suburban lawns
• Not native to the Pacific Northwest but planted obsessively in postwar subdivisions

Kerguelen Archipelago

• Remote French-administered islands in the southern Indian Ocean
• No permanent population, no airport
• One of the most isolated places on Earth

Ketel One

• Dutch vodka, distilled by the Nolet family since 1691
• Imported to the US beginning in 1983
• Positioning as a premium alternative to Absolut

King Kong

• 1933 monster movie with groundbreaking stop-motion effects by Willis O’Brien
• 1976 remake with Jessica Lange

Kinko’s

• 24-hour copy shop chain (now FedEx Office), founded 1970
• De facto office for freelancers and startups in the pre-internet era

Kleenex

• Kimberly-Clark facial tissue, introduced 1924
• Brand name became the generic American term for facial tissue

Knott’s Berry Farm

• Southern California theme park in Buena Park
• Originally a Depression-era berry stand; acquired by Cedar Fair in 1997

Kobe earthquake

• Great Hanshin earthquake, January 17, 1995
• Killed over 6,000 people, caused $100 billion in damage

Kool-Aid

• Powdered drink mix, introduced 1927
• “Drinking the Kool-Aid” references the 1978 Jonestown massacre (which actually used Flavor Aid)

Kowloon

• Densely packed peninsula across Victoria Harbour from Hong Kong Island
• Nearby Kowloon Walled City demolished 1993-94

Kraft Dinner

• Boxed macaroni and cheese
• Called Kraft Dinner (KD) in Canada, “Kraft Macaroni & Cheese” in America

Kraft Singles

• Individually wrapped processed cheese slices
• Technically a “pasteurized prepared cheese product,” not cheese

Kraftwerk

• German electronic music pioneers from Dusseldorf
• Autobahn (1974), Trans-Europe Express (1977), Computer World (1981)
• Essentially invented techno, electro, and most electronic dance music

Kristy McNichol

• Child actress in Family (1976-80) and Little Darlings (1980)
• Largely retired by the early 90s

Kudzu

• Fast-growing vine from Japan, introduced to the American South in the 1870s
• Can grow up to a foot per day in summer
• Common metaphor for unchecked growth

Kurt Cobain

• Frontman of Nirvana
• Nevermind exploded into mainstream fame in late 1991
• Suicide in April 1994

Kurt Vonnegut

• Satirical novelist
• Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Cat’s Cradle (1963)
• Dark humor, accessible prose, and observations about technology and human folly

L

LA Eyeworks

• Trendy Los Angeles eyewear boutique, founded 1979
• Known for avant-garde frame designs and celebrity clientele

Lady and the Tramp

• Disney’s 1955 animated romance about two dogs
• Iconic spaghetti-sharing scene

Lance Kerwin

• Teen idol of late-70s TV, best known for James at 15 (1977-78)

Las Vegas

• Home to COMDEX and CES trade shows
• Building boom in the early 90s: Luxor, Excalibur, MGM Grand all opened 1990-1993
• Older landmarks: Caesars Palace, Sands

Lego

• Danish interlocking building-block toy
• Before massive licensing deals, the blocks were a pure creative medium

LensCrafters

• Eyewear chain promising “glasses in about an hour,” founded 1983
• Ubiquitous in American malls

Leonard Cohen

• Canadian poet-songwriter
• Late-career resurgence with The Future (1992)
• Title track: “I’ve seen the future, brother / It is murder”

Leonard Nimoy

• Spock from Star Trek
• Directed Star Trek IV (1986); appeared in Star Trek VI (1991)

Leslie Van Houten

• Manson Family member convicted for the 1969 LaBianca murders
• Repeatedly denied parole through the early 90s

Lexus SC

• Lexus’s luxury coupe, launched 1991 as the SC 400 with a V8
• Part of the Japanese luxury brand wave

[Life magazine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_(magazine)

• Iconic American photojournalism magazine
• Original weekly run ended 1972; relaunched as monthly in 1978

Lindsey Wagner

• Star of The Bionic Woman (1976-78)
• By the early 90s, primarily known for Sleep Number mattress commercials

[Lisp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_(programming_language)

• Programming language of AI research, created by John McCarthy at MIT in 1958
• Beloved for elegant recursion and symbolic processing
• Little commercial market share vs. C/C++

Livermore

• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
• Nuclear weapons research facility in the eastern Bay Area
• Operated by the University of California since 1952

Lockheed

• Defense and aerospace contractor with a major facility in Sunnyvale
• Merged with Martin Marietta to form Lockheed Martin in 1995

[Logan’s Run](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan%27s_Run_(film)

• 1976 sci-fi film set in a sealed city where everyone is killed at age 30

Loni Anderson

• Best known as the blonde receptionist on WKRP in Cincinnati (1978-82)
• Tabloid-dominating 1993 divorce from Burt Reynolds

Lord of the Flies

• William Golding’s 1954 novel about schoolboys descending into savagery
• Assigned reading for virtually every American and Canadian high school student

Los Altos, California

• Affluent town in Silicon Valley’s western foothills
• Where Hewlett and Packard started HP in a garage in 1939

Los Angeles

• Entertainment capital; counterpoint to Silicon Valley
• 1992 riots and 1994 Northridge earthquake made it feel unstable

Louis Gerstner

• Former RJR Nabisco CEO hired April 1993 to save IBM
• Would engineer one of the great corporate turnarounds

Lucky Charms

• General Mills’ marshmallow cereal, introduced 1964
• “Magically delicious” tagline and leprechaun mascot

Lucky Mart

• Small convenience store or corner market
• Ubiquitous in Silicon Valley and Pacific Northwest neighborhoods

Lufthansa

• Germany’s flag carrier airline
• Known for efficiency and punctuality

Lyndon Johnson

• 36th president
• Great Society programs and Vietnam War escalation defined the 1960s

M

Macintosh Classic

• Apple’s entry-level compact Mac, 1990-1992, at $999
• Last Mac with the iconic all-in-one form factor

Macintosh Quadra

• Apple’s high-end desktop Mac line in the early 90s
• Motorola 68040 processors, aimed at creative professionals

MacUser

• Magazine for Macintosh enthusiasts
• Folded into MacWorld in 1997

Macworld Expo

• Annual Apple faithful gathering
• Tense affair in 1993-94 as Apple struggled with declining market share

Madonna

• Pop superstar constantly reinventing herself
• 1992 Erotica album and Sex book pushed mainstream boundaries

Magic Eye

• Autostereogram books where hidden 3D images appeared if you unfocused your eyes
• Massive early-90s fad

Margaret Keane

• Artist famous for paintings of big-eyed waifs
• Husband claimed credit for her work for decades

Marilyn Monroe

• 1950s screen icon, died 1962
• Warhol turned her into Pop Art
• Archetype of Hollywood glamour and tragedy

Marky Mark

• Mark Wahlberg’s early-90s rapper persona
• Shirtless Calvin Klein underwear ads and “Good Vibrations” (1991)

Marlboro

• World’s best-selling cigarette brand
• Marlboro Man cowboy campaign was one of the most iconic in advertising
• “Marlboro Friday” (April 1993): Philip Morris slashed prices in response to generic competition

Marshall McLuhan

• Canadian media theorist
• Coined “the medium is the message” and “global village”
• Wired magazine made him their posthumous “patron saint” in its 1993 launch issue

Martha Stewart

• Building her domestic-perfection empire in the early 90s
• Martha Stewart Living TV show launched 1993

Mattel

• Toy giant behind Barbie and Hot Wheels
• Locked in a toy-industry war with Hasbro in the early 90s

Maxis

• Game studio founded by Will Wright
• SimCity (1989), SimCity 2000 (1993), SimEarth, SimAnt, SimLife

Mazda Miata

• Affordable two-seat roadster introduced 1989
• Revived the concept of the fun, inexpensive sports car

McDonald’s

• World’s largest fast-food chain
• At peak cultural dominance in the early 90s

McMinnville, Oregon

• Small Willamette Valley town in Oregon wine country
• Stop on the I-5 corridor between Seattle and Silicon Valley

Medford, Oregon

• Small southern Oregon city near the California border
• Rest stop on the long I-5 drive

Melrose Place

• Aaron Spelling’s prime-time soap, guilty-pleasure phenomenon by 1993-94
• Young cast scheming in a Los Angeles apartment complex

Memory (game)

• Classic matching card game with face-down pairs
• Milton Bradley’s version was a childhood staple

Menlo Park, California

• Home to SRI International and Sand Hill Road venture capital firms
• Key node in Silicon Valley’s power geography

Mentos

• “Freshmaker” mint candy
• Surreal, upbeat TV commercials became an ironic pop-culture joke

Michael Jordan

• Greatest basketball player alive; Chicago Bulls’ first three-peat (1991-93)
• Shocking retirement in October 1993 to play baseball

Michigan J. Frog

• Singing, dancing frog from the 1955 Warner Bros. cartoon “One Froggy Evening”
• Performs only when no one else is watching
• Referenced in the novel as a “frog buried in cement”

Microsoft

• Dominant force in personal computing
• Riding Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS success; preparing Windows 95 launch
• Legendary 80-hour weeks, free sodas, and stock-option wealth

Microsoft Excel

• Spreadsheet application that had beaten Lotus 1-2-3 for market dominance

Microsoft Word

• Word processor rapidly overtaking WordPerfect
• Bundled with Windows as part of Microsoft Office

MIPS architecture

• RISC processor architecture powering Silicon Graphics workstations
• Used to create Jurassic Park’s effects
• Seen as the future of computing, but Intel’s scale won out

Miracle Whip

• Kraft’s tangy mayonnaise alternative, since 1933
• Divided American households between strong preference and strong aversion

Mitch Kapor

• Creator of Lotus 1-2-3
• Co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation with John Perry Barlow

Model trains

• Hobby of building miniature railroad layouts with painstaking attention to scale

Monopoly

• Parker Brothers’ real estate board game, first published 1935
• Best-selling board game in history

Morrissey

• Former Smiths frontman, deep into his solo career by the early 90s
• Your Arsenal (1992) and Vauxhall and I (1994)

Mother Teresa

• Albanian nun working with the poor in Calcutta
• Nobel Peace Prize in 1979

Motorola

• Made the 68000-series processors powering every Macintosh
• Partnering with IBM and Apple on PowerPC architecture
• Also producing early mobile phones

Motorola 68000

• Processor family (680x0) powering Macintosh, Amiga, and Atari ST
• Widely considered a more elegant design than Intel’s x86
• Apple preparing to abandon it for PowerPC by 1993

Mountain View, California

• Home to Silicon Graphics and Netscape (later Google)
• Core Silicon Valley city along the Highway 101 corridor

Mrs. Fields

• Cookie chain in malls and airports, founded 1977

MS-DOS

• Text-based command-line OS, backbone of IBM-compatible PCs since 1981
• Still running underneath Windows 3.1 in 1993

Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom

• Nature documentary show hosted by Marlin Perkins, 1963-1988
• Running joke: Perkins narrated from safety while assistant Jim wrestled dangerous animals

Mylar

• Reflective polyester film used in shiny balloons and emergency blankets

N

Nancy Reagan

• Former First Lady known for the “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign
• Reportedly consulted an astrologer for President Reagan’s schedule

Napa, California

• Wine country town north of San Francisco
• Established as America’s premier wine region but hadn’t yet reached stratospheric pricing

Narcissus

• Greek mythological figure who fell in love with his own reflection
• Gave us the word “narcissism”

NASDAQ

• Electronic stock exchange where most tech companies were listed
• Beginning its climb toward the dot-com bubble peak of March 2000

NEC

• Japanese electronics giant making chips, monitors, and supercomputers
• NEC monitors were considered among the best available

Neil Peart

• Drummer and lyricist of Rush
• Virtuosic playing and Ayn Rand-influenced lyrics

Neiman Marcus

• Luxury department store chain from Dallas
• Shorthand for the high end of American retail

Nerf

• Hasbro’s foam-based toy brand
• Nerf gun battles became a defining feature of 90s tech office culture

Nestle Crunch

• Crisped-rice chocolate bar
• Standard vending machine option

Neutrogena

• Skincare brand marketed as gentle and dermatologist-recommended
• Amber soap bars and clean packaging

New York Times

• Paper of record for American journalism
• John Markoff’s tech reporting was required industry reading

NeXT

• Steve Jobs’ post-Apple company, founded 1985
• Beautiful black-cube workstations; NeXTSTEP OS admired by developers
• Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web on a NeXT at CERN
• Apple acquired NeXT in 1996, bringing Jobs back

Nick the Greek

• Legendary gambler Nick Dandolos (1883-1966)
• Reportedly won and lost over $500 million in his lifetime

Nike

• Athletic footwear and apparel giant from Beaverton, Oregon
• “Just Do It” campaigns and Michael Jordan partnership
• Pacific Northwest success story

Nintendo

• Ruler of console gaming with the Super Nintendo
• Locked in “console war” with Sega

Nintendo Virtual Boy

• Nintendo’s ill-fated 1995 VR gaming attempt
• Red-and-black monochrome 3D; discontinued within a year

Nirvana

• Seattle grunge band; Nevermind (1991) detonated mainstream rock
• Kurt Cobain’s suicide in April 1994 was a defining generational moment

Nissan Altima

• Nissan’s mid-size sedan, introduced 1992
• Positioned between the Sentra and the Maxima

No Regrets for Our Youth

• Akira Kurosawa’s 1946 film about political idealism in wartime Japan
• Starring Setsuko Hara

Nokia

• Finnish company beginning its ascent to mobile phone dominance in the mid-90s
• Had pivoted from rubber boots and paper products to telecommunications
• In 1993, mobile phones were still expensive luxury items

NORAD

• North American Aerospace Defense Command inside Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado
• Famous from the 1983 film WarGames
• Annual “tracking Santa Claus” tradition on Christmas Eve

NordicTrack

• Home exercise equipment brand
• Cross-country ski machines advertised on late-night infomercials

Nordstrom

• Seattle-born upscale department store
• Famous for exceptional customer service

Northwest Airlines

• Major U.S. carrier with hub in Minneapolis and extensive Asian routes
• Absorbed into Delta in 2010

NutraSweet

• Brand name for aspartame artificial sweetener
• Ubiquitous in diet sodas throughout the 80s and 90s

O

Oakland, California

• San Francisco’s grittier sibling across the Bay
• Recovering from the 1991 Hills firestorm and 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake

Object-oriented programming

• Hot programming paradigm of the early 90s
• Encapsulation, inheritance, and code reuse
• Driven by the rise of C++ and the upcoming Java

Ogilvy & Mather

• Advertising agency founded by David Ogilvy in 1948
• Known for campaigns for American Express, IBM, and Dove

Olympia, Washington

• Washington’s state capital; home to Evergreen State College
• Spawned the riot grrrl movement and K Records

Oracle

• Larry Ellison’s database giant in Redwood Shores
• Relational database products were the backbone of corporate computing

Orange Julius

• Mall smoothie chain serving frothy orange drinks since the 1960s

Oregon grape

• Oregon’s state flower (technically a shrub)
• Holly-like leaves, yellow flowers, dusty blue berries

OS/2

• IBM’s technically superior but commercially doomed alternative to Windows
• “Warp” branding in 1994
• Quintessential example of a better product losing to superior marketing and platform lock-in

Oscar de la Renta

• Dominican-American fashion designer
• Dressed First Ladies and socialites

Ottawa

• Canada’s capital; growing tech hub in the early 90s
• Home to Nortel Networks and Corel; known as “Silicon Valley North”

Ovaltine

• Chocolate malt drink mix
• Immortalized by A Christmas Story’s “Be sure to drink your Ovaltine” scene

P

Pablo Picasso

• 20th century’s most famous artist, died 1973
• Shorthand for creative genius and radical innovation

Pacific Bell

• Regional telephone company serving California
• Baby Bell created by the 1984 AT&T breakup

Pacifica, California

• Foggy coastal town just south of San Francisco
• Perched on eroding cliffs above the Pacific

Pager

• One-way wireless messaging devices (SkyTel, Motorola Bravo)
• Primary mobile communication tool before affordable cell phones

Palo Alto, California

• Home to Stanford University and Xerox PARC
• Intellectual birthplace of personal computing
• Hewlett and Packard started in a Palo Alto garage

Palmolive

• Dish soap brand
• Long-running ad campaign featured Madge the manicurist: “You’re soaking in it”

Pamela Anderson

• Canadian-born Baywatch star
• Defining pin-up of the mid-90s

Panasonic

• Consumer electronics brand of Matsushita (Japan)
• Made everything from batteries to VCRs to laptops

Pascal

• Teaching language designed by Niklaus Wirth in 1970
• Borland’s Turbo Pascal (1983) made it popular on PCs
• Being overtaken by C/C++ for professional work by the early 90s

Patagonia

• Outdoor clothing company founded by Yvon Chouinard in 1973
• Known for fleece jackets and environmental activism
• Fleece became the unofficial uniform of Northern California tech workers

Paul Allen

• Microsoft co-founder; left daily operations in 1983 after Hodgkin’s lymphoma
• Investing in the Portland Trail Blazers, cable companies, and more by the early 90s

Peanuts

• Charles Schulz’s comic strip about Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and friends
• Still running daily in the early 90s (Schulz drew it until just before his death in 2000)

Pentium

• Intel’s flagship processor, launched March 1993 at 60 MHz
• Infamous late-1994 floating-point division bug triggered a massive PR crisis
• Name was a marketing innovation (trademarked instead of a number)

People

• Time Inc.'s celebrity weekly, selling over 3 million copies a week by the early 90s
• “Sexiest Man Alive” and “Most Beautiful People” issues

Pepsi

• Coca-Cola’s eternal rival
• Steve Jobs famously recruited John Sculley from Pepsi to Apple

Pez

• Candy dispenser with collectible character heads, dating to the 1950s
• Among the first collectibles traded on eBay

Philippe Kahn

• French-born CEO of Borland International
• Turbo Pascal and dBase products made Borland a rival to Microsoft
• Later credited with inventing the camera phone

Philips CD-i

• Philips’ multimedia player launched 1991
• Tried to be a game console, movie player, and educational tool; failed at all three
• Bizarre licensed Nintendo games with infamously terrible animation

Pilchuck Glass School

• Glass art school north of Seattle, co-founded by Dale Chihuly in 1971

Pink Floyd

• British progressive rock band
• The Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall, Wish You Were Here
• 1994 album The Division Bell was a massive commercial success

Pixy Stix

• Flavored sugar in paper straws
• Essentially pure candy in its most reduced form

Planet of the Apes

• 1968 sci-fi film starring Charlton Heston
• Famous twist ending: half-buried Statue of Liberty on the beach
• Spawned four sequels and a TV series

Play-Doh

• Colorful modeling compound, universal childhood craft material since the 1950s
• Distinctive smell is a powerful nostalgia trigger
• Play-Doh Fun Factory extrusion toy

PlaySkool

• Hasbro’s preschool toy brand
• Shape sorters, stacking rings, Mr. Potato Head

Polaroid

• Instant camera company; self-developing photographs
• Struggling against conventional film by the early 90s

Pong

• 1972 Atari arcade game that launched the video game industry
• Simple table-tennis simulation

Pop-Tarts

• Kellogg’s foil-wrapped toaster pastries
• Flavors like frosted strawberry and brown sugar cinnamon
• Zero preparation required; functionally infinite shelf life

Popeye

• Spinach-eating sailor cartoon character created by E.C. Segar in 1929
• “I yam what I yam”

Porsche 928

• Porsche’s front-engined grand touring coupe, 1977-1995
• Featured in Risky Business (1983) with Tom Cruise

Port Angeles, Washington

• Remote town on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula
• Gateway to Olympic National Park and ferry terminal for Victoria, BC

Posh Bagel

• Bay Area bagel chain

PowerBook

• Apple’s laptop line, launched 1991
• Introduced the now-standard design of keyboard pushed back with trackball in front
• One of the few bright spots in Apple’s troubled era

PowerPC

• RISC processor by Apple, IBM, and Motorola (the “AIM alliance”), announced 1991
• First PowerPC Macs shipped 1994
• Apple switched to Intel in 2006

Prince

• Genre-defying Minneapolis musician
• Purple Rain (1984), Sign o’ the Times (1987), Diamonds and Pearls (1991)
• In 1993, in a bitter war with Warner Bros.; changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol

Prozac

• SSRI antidepressant, launched 1987
• Subject of Peter Kramer’s Listening to Prozac (1993)

Puget Sound

• Vast inlet of the Pacific Ocean defining western Washington’s geography
• Stretches from Olympia to the San Juan Islands

Punnett square

• Genetics diagram used to predict offspring trait combinations
• Standard high school biology vocabulary

Q

QuarkXPress

• Desktop publishing software that dominated magazine and newspaper layout
• ~95% market share before Adobe InDesign dethroned it

Quicken

• Intuit’s personal finance software, launched 1983
• Microsoft tried and failed to acquire Intuit in 1994-95 (blocked by DOJ)

R

R-Kive

• Storage boxes by Fellowes for organizing and archiving documents
• Fixture of pre-digital offices

RadioShack

• Electronics retail chain in every American strip mall
• Sold TRS-80 computers, soldering irons, and electronic components

Raffi

• Armenian-Canadian children’s entertainer
• Songs like “Baby Beluga” and “Bananaphone”

Raggedy Ann

• Red-haired rag doll character dating to 1915

RAND Corporation

• Cold War think tank in Santa Monica
• Helped develop game theory, nuclear strategy, and packet-switching concepts (precursor to ARPANET)

Randy Johnson

• 6’10" Seattle Mariners pitcher
• Terrifying 100-mph fastball

[Red Herring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Herring_(magazine)

• Silicon Valley business magazine launched 1993
• Covered tech startups and venture capital

Redmond, Washington

• Microsoft’s headquarters city
• Formerly quiet suburb that became effectively a company town

Redondo Beach, California

• South Bay beach city in the LA area
• Home to aerospace defense contractors like TRW and Northrop

Redwood City, California

• Mid-Peninsula city with Oracle headquarters
• “Climate Best by Government Test” welcome sign

Reese’s Pieces

• Peanut butter candy used to lure E.T. in Spielberg’s 1982 film
• M&M’s had declined the product placement

Ren and Stimpy

• John Kricfalusi’s grotesquely funny Nickelodeon cartoon, 1991-96
• Pushed boundaries of what a “children’s show” could depict

Rene Magritte

• Belgian surrealist painter
• Bowler-hatted men, impossible scenes, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”

Revell

• Model kit company
• Plastic scale models of cars, planes, warships, and spacecraft

Rhododendron

• Washington state’s official flower
• Evergreen shrub ubiquitous in Pacific Northwest gardens

Rice Krispies

• Kellogg’s puffed rice cereal
• Snap, Crackle, and Pop mascots; eponymous treats with melted marshmallows

Rice-A-Roni

• “The San Francisco Treat”
• Boxed rice-and-vermicelli side dish, advertised since the 1960s

[Richie Rich](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richie_Rich_(comics)

• Harvey Comics’ “poor little rich boy”
• Fantasies of limitless wealth: money bins, robot butlers

Ricki Lake

• Daytime talk show launched September 1993
• Targeted younger viewers with edgier topics

Riot Act

• Britain’s Riot Act of 1714 authorized ordering crowds to disperse
• Origin of the idiom “to read the riot act”

Riot grrrl

• Feminist punk movement, 1991-92, centered in Olympia, WA and Washington, DC
• Bands like Bikini Kill and Bratmobile; combined punk with zine culture

Road & Track

• Car enthusiast magazine founded 1947
• Focused on automotive engineering and performance

Robitussin

• Cough syrup brand, medicine cabinet staple since 1956
• Active ingredient dextromethorphan has dissociative effects in large doses

Rocky and Bullwinkle

• Jay Ward’s 1960s cartoon
• Humor operated on two levels: slapstick for kids, Cold War satire for adults

Ronald Reagan

• Left office January 1989
• Deregulation policies and defense spending shaped the landscape for the tech boom
• Alzheimer’s diagnosis came November 1994

[Rosemary’s Baby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary%27s_Baby_(film)

• Roman Polanski’s 1968 horror classic
• Woman discovers neighbors conspired to impregnate her with Satan’s child

Ross Perot

• Texas billionaire who ran an independent presidential campaign in 1992
• Won nearly 19% of the popular vote
• Founded Electronic Data Systems; first presidential candidate from the tech world

Royal Jordanian

• Jordan’s flag carrier airline

Rube Goldberg

• Cartoonist and engineer (1883-1970)
• Famous for drawing absurdly complex machines that performed simple tasks
• Name became the standard metaphor for over-engineered systems

[Rush](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_(band)

• Canadian prog-rock trio: Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, Neil Peart
• Technical virtuosity and Ayn Rand-influenced lyrics

S

Saab Automobile

• Swedish carmaker, originally an aircraft manufacturer
• Quirky engineering; intellectual brand image
• GM acquired a stake by the early 90s

Safeway

• Major West Coast supermarket chain, headquartered in Oakland

Sago palm

• Ornamental tropical plant common in California landscaping
• Technically a cycad, not a palm; dates back to the Jurassic period

Salal

• Evergreen shrub native to the Pacific Northwest
• Ubiquitous in the understory of the region’s forests

[Sally Forth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Forth_(Howard)

• Newspaper comic strip by Greg Howard (launched 1982) about a working mother

Sambuca

• Italian anise-flavored liqueur
• Traditionally served with three coffee beans floating on top

Sammamish Plateau

• Rapidly developing suburban area east of Redmond
• Where Microsoft millionaires were building houses in the early 90s

Samsung

• Korean electronics conglomerate
• In the early 90s, known primarily as a budget brand for TVs and microwaves

San Carlos, California

• Quiet Peninsula suburb between San Francisco and San Jose

San Francisco

• In 1993-94, still primarily a bohemian, culturally rich city
• Not yet the tech-colonized landscape it would become after the dot-com boom

San Jose Mercury News

• Silicon Valley’s hometown newspaper
• Most important regional publication for tech industry coverage in the early 90s

San Jose, California

• Largest city in Silicon Valley; self-proclaimed “Capital of Silicon Valley”
• Home to Adobe, Cisco, and countless smaller firms

San Mateo, California

• Mid-Peninsula city and county seat
• Part of the suburban fabric connecting San Francisco to Silicon Valley

Sand Hill Road

• Road in Menlo Park synonymous with venture capital
• Home to Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, and dozens of other firms

Sandoz Pharmaceuticals

• Swiss company where Albert Hofmann first synthesized LSD in 1938
• Merged into Novartis in 1996

Santa Barbara, California

• Affluent coastal city between LA and San Francisco
• Red-tile roofs, wine country, and Reagan-ranch associations

[Sassy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sassy_(magazine)

• Groundbreaking teen magazine (1988-96) edited by Jane Pratt
• Covered indie music, feminism, and real-world issues with intelligence and irreverence

Scott McNealy

• Combative CEO of Sun Microsystems
• Relentless anti-Microsoft rhetoric
• “What part of ‘the network is the computer’ don’t you understand?”

Scrooge McDuck

• Disney duck who swam in a vault of gold coins
• Created by Carl Barks; starred in DuckTales (1987-90)

SCSI

• Small Computer System Interface (pronounced “scuzzy”)
• High-speed data bus for hard drives and peripherals
• Daisy-chained cabling and arcane termination requirements

Sea Monkeys

• Brine shrimp sold via comic-book ads with wildly misleading illustrations
• Shared childhood disappointment

Sears

• Once America’s largest retailer; built the Sears Tower
• Visibly declining by the early 90s

Seattle, Washington

• Simultaneously the capital of grunge music and an emerging tech hub in 1993-94
• Microsoft employees on the Eastside suburbs often treated the city as distant

SeaWorld

• Marine theme park featuring Shamu the killer whale
• Years before Blackfish (2013) reframed it

Secret Squirrel

• Hanna-Barbera’s spy-parody cartoon from 1965
• Trench-coated squirrel agent and sidekick Morocco Mole
• Brief revival on 1993’s 2 Stupid Dogs

Sega Genesis

• Sega’s 16-bit console, released in North America 1989
• “Genesis does what Nintendon’t” marketing
• Sonic the Hedgehog as mascot

Seinfeld

• By 1993-94, the most talked-about comedy on television
• Vocabulary entered common usage: “master of your domain,” “yada yada yada”

Shaker furniture

• Austere, handcrafted furniture from the Shaker religious community
• Minimalist functionality; beauty from utility

Shareware

• Software distribution model: freely copied, users asked to pay voluntarily
• Supported companies like id Software (Doom) and Apogee

Shriner

• Members of the Shriners fraternal order
• Known for driving tiny cars in parades while wearing fez hats

Siegfried and Roy

• German-born Las Vegas duo; white-tiger magic show at the Mirage
• Most famous act in Vegas in the late 80s and early 90s

Siemens-Nixdorf

• German computer company formed 1990
• European tech’s attempt to compete with American and Japanese PC makers

Sierra Club

• America’s oldest environmental organization, founded 1892 by John Muir
• Embroiled in battles over old-growth logging and spotted owl habitat in the early 90s

Sigourney Weaver

• Ellen Ripley from the Alien franchise (1979, 1986, 1992)
• One of the few female action heroes in mainstream cinema

Silicon Graphics (SGI)

• High-end graphics workstations
• Rendered Jurassic Park dinosaurs (1993) and T2’s liquid metal T-1000 (1991)

Silicon Valley

• Established center of hardware, semiconductor, and software industries by 1993-94
• Home to HP, Intel, Apple, and Sun
• On the cusp of transforming into the internet startup epicenter

SimCity

• Will Wright’s open-ended city-building simulation, first released 1989
• SimCity 2000 followed in 1993

Sinclair ZX81

• Tiny, ultra-cheap British home computer from 1981
• 1KB of RAM, membrane keyboard, under $100
• Introduced a generation to programming

Sizzler

• Budget steakhouse and salad bar chain
• Peaked in the late 80s/early 90s; bankruptcy in 1996

[Skittles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skittles_(confectionery)

• Brightly colored fruit candies
• “Taste the Rainbow” slogan

Smith & Hawken

• Upscale garden supply company founded in Mill Valley, California, 1979

Smurfs

• Tiny blue Belgian cartoon characters created by Peyo
• Saturday-morning TV staple on NBC, 1981-1989

Snapple

• “Made from the Best Stuff on Earth” iced tea and juice brand
• Quaker Oats bought it for $1.7 billion in 1994, widely regarded as a terrible acquisition

Snickers

• America’s best-selling candy bar since 1930
• Chocolate, caramel, peanuts, and nougat

SoftImage

• Montreal-based 3D animation software company
• Used to create Jurassic Park’s dinosaurs
• Microsoft acquired it in 1994 for $130 million

[Solid Gold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_Gold_(TV_series)

• Syndicated music show (1980-88) with the Solid Gold Dancers

Soloflex

• Portland-based home gym machine
• Famous for late-night TV ads with an oiled, shirtless muscular man

Sony

• Japanese electronics colossus
• Walkman defined portable music; Trinitron TVs were the gold standard
• Columbia Pictures acquisition in 1989

Sour strings

• Sour gummy candy, long flexible sugar-coated ropes
• Products like Sour Punch Straws (1990) led the category

Soylent Green

• 1973 dystopian film starring Charlton Heston
• “Soylent Green is people!” – one of cinema’s most spoiled endings

Space Needle

• Seattle’s iconic 605-foot tower built for the 1962 World’s Fair

Spaghetti-O’s

• Campbell’s canned pasta rings in tomato sauce, introduced 1965
• “Uh-oh, SpaghettiOs” jingle

Spy vs. Spy

• Wordless Mad magazine comic strip by Antonio Prohias, running since 1961
• Two identical spies endlessly trying to outwit each other

Stanford Linear Accelerator

• Two-mile-long particle accelerator (SLAC) above Stanford University
• Hosted the first web server in North America in December 1991

Stanford University

• Elite university at Silicon Valley’s heart
• Graduates seeded companies from HP to Sun Microsystems
• In 1993-94, Jerry Yang and David Filo were building what became Yahoo

Star Trek

• Full renaissance in the early 90s: TNG at peak ratings, Deep Space Nine launched January 1993
• References were the lingua franca of tech culture

Starbucks

• Seattle-born coffeehouse chain
• About 250 stores in 1993; not yet the global phenomenon it became

Steve Ballmer

• Bill Gates’ college friend and right-hand man at Microsoft
• Microsoft’s president; famously manic intensity
• “Developers, developers, developers”

Steve Jobs

• In his wilderness years in 1993-94
• Running NeXT (sold poorly) and Pixar (not yet proven)
• Wouldn’t return to Apple until 1997

Steve Wozniak

• Apple co-founder who single-handedly designed the Apple I and Apple II
• Long since departed from Apple by the early 90s

Steven Spielberg

• In 1993, released both Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List
• Won his first Best Director Oscar for the latter

[Sting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sting_(musician)

• Former Police frontman
• The Soul Cages (1991), Ten Summoner’s Tales (1993)
• Well-publicized rainforest activism

Stouffer’s

• Nestle-owned frozen meal brand
• Lean Cuisine and French Bread Pizza lines

Strait of Juan de Fuca

• Waterway separating Washington’s Olympic Peninsula from Vancouver Island

Sudafed

• Pseudoephedrine-based nasal decongestant
• Could be bought over the counter before meth-related regulations moved it behind the pharmacy counter

Sun Microsystems

• Founded 1982; UNIX workstations and servers
• Slogan: “The Network Is the Computer”
• Open-systems philosophy opposed Microsoft’s proprietary approach

Sunnyvale, California

• Central Silicon Valley city
• Home to Lockheed, AMD, and Onizuka Air Force Station

[Sunset](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_(magazine)

• Magazine of Western living, published since 1898
• Headquartered in Menlo Park; covered home design, gardening, food, and travel

Super Mario Bros.

• Nintendo’s 1985 platformer, sold over 40 million copies
• Defined the side-scrolling template

Susan Dey

• Laurie Partridge from The Partridge Family (1970-74)
• Later Grace Van Owen on LA Law (1986-92)

Suzy Wong bar stool

• Bar stool inspired by The World of Suzie Wong (1957/1960)
• Rattan or bamboo-framed; associated with tiki bars and mid-century lounge decor

T

[Tab](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_(drink)

• Coca-Cola’s diet soda, introduced in 1963
• Largely supplanted by Diet Coke by the early 90s

Talking Heads

• Art-rock band led by David Byrne
• Disbanded in December 1991
• Known for “Psycho Killer,” “Once in a Lifetime,” and the concert film Stop Making Sense (1984)

Tandy Corporation

• Parent company of RadioShack
• Sold the TRS-80 line of personal computers starting in 1977
• Largely exited the PC business by 1993

[Tang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_(drink_mix)

• Powdered orange drink mix associated with NASA’s space program (though NASA did not develop it)

Target

• Minneapolis-based discount retailer
• In the early 90s, repositioning as a more stylish alternative to Walmart and K-Mart

Tetris

• Puzzle game designed by Alexey Pajitnov in 1985
• Bundled with Nintendo’s Game Boy in 1989
• One of the most played games in history

[The $10,000 Pyramid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_(game_show)

• Word-association game show hosted by Dick Clark
• Ran in various incarnations from 1973 through the early 90s

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

• Stephen Covey’s 1989 self-help book
• Sold over 10 million copies by the mid-90s
• Popularized “paradigm shifts” and “win-win thinking”

[The Andromeda Strain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain_(film)

• 1971 Robert Wise film adapted from Michael Crichton’s 1969 novel
• Scientists race to contain a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism

The Banana Splits

• Hanna-Barbera variety show (1968-70) with actors in oversized animal costumes
• Aired in Saturday morning reruns throughout the 70s

The Bionic Woman

• 1976-78 sci-fi series starring Lindsay Wagner as a cybernetically enhanced agent
• Spinoff of The Six Million Dollar Man

The Bob Newhart Show

• Dry, cerebral 1972-78 sitcom about a Chicago psychologist

The Body Shop

• Ethically-minded cosmetics chain founded by Anita Roddick in 1976
• Sold products alongside messaging about animal testing and fair trade

The Bomb Shelter

• Official student pub of the University of Waterloo, Ontario
• Waterloo known for its co-op engineering and CS programs

[The Bodyguard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bodyguard_(1992_film)

• 1992 Whitney Houston/Kevin Costner romantic thriller
• Soundtrack with “I Will Always Love You” became the best-selling soundtrack album of all time

The Brady Bunch

• 1969-74 family sitcom
• Omnipresent in reruns; 1995 movie parody

The Chronicles of Narnia

• C.S. Lewis’s seven-volume fantasy series, 1950-56
• Central conceit of a wardrobe that opens into another world

The Dalai Lama

• Exiled spiritual leader of Tibet
• Won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989
• Richard Gere’s advocacy and the “Free Tibet” movement raised his profile

The Doors

• Jim Morrison’s rock band from the late 60s
• Oliver Stone’s 1991 biopic starring Val Kilmer revived interest

The Fantastic Four

• Marvel superhero team created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1961
• A never-released 1994 film was produced by Roger Corman purely to retain the rights

The Far Side

• Gary Larson’s single-panel newspaper comic, 1980-1995
• Surreal humor featuring scientists, animals, and absurd premises

The Flintstones

• Hanna-Barbera’s 1960-66 prime-time animated series
• Live-action movie with John Goodman released May 1994

The Gap

• Clothing retailer defining safe, casual American style
• Known for khakis and pocket tees

[The Germs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germs_(band)

• Chaotic LA punk band fronted by Darby Crash
• Crash overdosed December 1980 at age 22, the day before Lennon was shot
• Sole album GI (1979) produced by Joan Jett

The Good Earth

• Pearl S. Buck’s 1931 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about Chinese peasant life

The Kingdome

• Seattle’s concrete-domed multipurpose stadium, opened 1976
• Home to the Mariners and Seahawks
• Demolished in 2000

The Lockhorns

• Single-panel comic strip since 1968
• Miserable married couple trading insults

The Mary Tyler Moore Show

• Landmark 1970-77 sitcom about a single woman in a Minneapolis newsroom

The Monkees

• Manufactured 1960s pop band assembled for a TV show
• Revival through MTV reruns in the mid-80s

The Muppets

• Jim Henson’s puppet characters: Sesame Street (Big Bird), The Muppet Show (1976-81)
• Henson’s death in 1990 at age 53

The National Enquirer

• Supermarket tabloid
• Alien abductions, celebrity scandals, outrageous headlines

The Newlywed Game

• Game show hosted by Bob Eubanks since 1966
• Married couples guessing each other’s answers to innuendo-laden questions

The Oprah Winfrey Show

• Dominant daytime talk show in America by the early 90s

The Osmonds

• Mormon singing family from Utah with a TV variety show in the early 70s
• Donny and Marie were breakout stars

The Partridge Family

• 1970-74 sitcom about a family pop band
• Starred Shirley Jones and David Cassidy

[The Poseidon Adventure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Poseidon_Adventure_(1972_film)

• 1972 disaster film starring Gene Hackman
• Survivors climb through an upside-down ocean liner

The Ramones

• Foundational punk band from 1970s Queens, New York
• Stripped-down, two-minute, three-chord songs

The Simpsons

• In its golden age during 1993-94 (roughly seasons 4-6)

The Terminator

• James Cameron’s 1984 sci-fi thriller
• 1991 sequel Terminator 2 featured groundbreaking CGI

The Twilight Zone

• Rod Serling’s 1959-64 anthology series
• Known for twist endings and moral lessons

THINK C

• Symantec’s C programming environment for Macintosh
• Overtaken by Metrowerks’ CodeWarrior around 1993-94

Thinking Machines

• Maker of the Connection Machine, a massively parallel supercomputer
• Filed for bankruptcy August 1994 during the “AI winter”

Thomas J. Watson

• Ran IBM from 1914 to 1956
• Known for dark suits, white shirts, and the corporate motto “THINK”

[Tide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide_(brand)

• Procter & Gamble’s laundry detergent
• America’s best-selling detergent since 1946

Timothy Leary

• 1960s LSD guru and Harvard psychology professor
• Reinvented himself in the early 90s as a cyberculture evangelist
• “The PC is the LSD of the 1990s”

Tina Yothers

• Played Jennifer Keaton on Family Ties (1982-89)

Tintin

• Herge’s Belgian boy-reporter comic, published 1929-1976
• Translated into dozens of languages

Tokyo

• Capital of Japan; tech industry (Sony, Panasonic, Nintendo, Sega) dominated consumer electronics
• Japan’s economic bubble had burst in 1991

Tom Sawyer

• Mark Twain’s 1876 novel about a mischievous boy on the Mississippi
• Fence-whitewashing scene is an early literary example of social engineering

[Tommy Hilfiger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Hilfiger_(fashion_designer)

• American fashion designer with red-white-and-blue preppy branding
• Popularity exploded in the mid-90s, partly driven by hip-hop adoption

Tootsie

• 1982 Sydney Pollack comedy starring Dustin Hoffman
• Actor disguises himself as a woman to land a soap opera role

Top Ramen

• Nissin’s instant noodles, roughly ten cents a package

Topsy Tail

• Plastic hair-styling tool sold through infomercials starting 1991
• Generated over $100 million in sales

Tori Spelling

• Daughter of television mogul Aaron Spelling
• Cast on Beverly Hills, 90210 beginning in 1990

Toronto

• Canada’s largest city
• Referenced via the Eaton Centre shopping mall

Total Quality Management

• Management philosophy imported from Japanese manufacturing (W. Edwards Deming)
• Dominant corporate buzzword of the early 90s

Toyota Camry

• Reliable Japanese sedan
• Became America’s best-selling car in 1992

Toyota Supra

• Toyota’s flagship sports car
• Dramatic 1993 redesign with twin-turbo inline-six
• One of the fastest production cars at the time

Toys “R” Us

• Toy superstore chain founded 1957
• At its commercial peak in the early 90s; went bankrupt in 2017

Trabant

• Notoriously terrible East German car, 1957-1990
• Smoky two-stroke engine; body partly of compressed cotton fiber
• Became an icon after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989

Trepanation

• Ancient practice of drilling a hole in the skull
• Bizarre fringe revival in the early 90s
• Championed by Bart Huges and Amanda Feilding

Trilateral Commission

• International policy group founded 1973 by David Rockefeller
• Touchstone of conspiracy theories on both left and right

[Trix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trix_(cereal)

• General Mills’ fruit-flavored cereal
• “Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids!”

Troll doll

• Wild-haired plastic figurines created in 1959 by Danish fisherman Thomas Dam
• Massive commercial revival in the early 90s

Tron

• Disney’s 1982 film set inside a computer, starring Jeff Bridges
• Commercial disappointment; became a cult classic
• Pioneering computer graphics

TRW

• Defense and aerospace conglomerate
• Major facilities in Redondo Beach, California

Tukwila, Washington

• Small city south of Seattle
• Known for Southcenter Mall (now Westfield Southcenter)

Tut’s Hut

• Kitschy lounge or bar in Las Vegas
• Egyptian-tiki themed; predated the mega-resort era

Turing test

• Alan Turing’s 1950 thought experiment
• A machine is intelligent if a human can’t distinguish its responses from a real person’s

U

U-Haul

• Truck and trailer rental company, founded 1945
• Orange-and-white vehicles synonymous with moving

UC Santa Cruz

• Most countercultural campus in the UC system
• Banana slug mascot; narrative evaluations instead of grades

United Airlines

• Major carrier with a hub at San Francisco International
• “Fly the Friendly Skies”

UNIX

• Multiuser operating system developed at Bell Labs in the early 1970s
• Ran on workstations and servers across academia and industry
• Beloved by hackers for its elegant design and command-line power

USAir

• East Coast-focused carrier
• Rebranded as US Airways in 1997; merged with American Airlines in 2013

V

[Valley of the Dolls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_of_the_Dolls_(film)

• 1967 melodrama about pill-popping women in Hollywood
• Critically savaged; became a camp classic

VCR

• Videocassette recorder; revolutionized home entertainment in the 1980s
• Every American household had one by the early 90s
• Betamax format war was ancient history
• Flashing “12:00” on an unset VCR became a cliche

VDT

• Video display terminal – generic term for a computer monitor
• Especially the bulky CRT monitors of early-90s offices

Victoria’s Secret

• Lingerie retailer transforming into a cultural phenomenon in the early 90s
• First Fashion Show still years away (1995)

Virgin Atlantic

• Richard Branson’s airline, launched 1984
• Challenged British Airways with flashy branding and better service

Volkswagen Microbus

• Iconic VW Type 2 van, produced from 1950 to 2013
• Strongly associated with 1960s counterculture

W

Wackenhut

• Private security firm founded 1954 by an ex-FBI agent
• Guarded corporate campuses, government facilities, and nuclear sites

Wall Street Journal

• Paper of record for American business and finance
• Iconic front-page hedcut illustrations

Waterloo, Ontario

• Canadian city about an hour west of Toronto
• University of Waterloo’s co-op and CS programs produced many tech workers
• Research In Motion (later BlackBerry) founded there in 1984

Watership Down

• Richard Adams’ 1972 novel about rabbits seeking a new home
• 1978 animated film adaptation traumatized a generation with its graphic violence

Waxahachie

• Small Texas town, planned site of the Superconducting Super Collider
• Congress cancelled it in October 1993 after $2 billion spent and 14 miles of tunnel dug

[Wayne’s World](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne%27s_World_(film)

• 1992 comedy from Saturday Night Live sketches; Mike Myers and Dana Carvey
• Catchphrases: “Excellent!” “Party on!” “Schwing!”

Weird Stuff Warehouse

• Surplus electronics store in Sunnyvale, California
• Part flea market, part museum of computing history

Western hemlock

• Washington state’s official tree
• Towering evergreen reaching 200 feet; drooping, feathery branches

Western red cedar

• Massive, fragrant evergreen iconic to the Pacific Northwest
• Used by Indigenous peoples for canoes, longhouses, and totem poles

[Wheel of Fortune](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_of_Fortune_(American_game_show)

• Letter-guessing game show hosted by Pat Sajak and Vanna White
• Most-watched syndicated show on American television by the early 90s

Whidbey Island

• Long, pastoral island in Puget Sound
• Weekend escape for Seattle-area residents

Whirlpool

• Benton Harbor, Michigan-based appliance manufacturer

William Shatner

• Captain Kirk from Star Trek
• Fully leaned into self-parody by the early 90s

Williams-Sonoma

• Upscale kitchenware store, founded in Sonoma, California, 1956

Windows NT

• Microsoft’s 32-bit OS, launched July 1993
• Designed by Dave Cutler’s team to compete with UNIX
• Built for stability, security, and networking

WordPerfect

• Word processor that dominated the DOS era
• Beloved for its “reveal codes” feature
• Losing market share catastrophically to Microsoft Word
• Novell acquired it in 1994

X

[Xerox PARC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_(company)

• Legendary Palo Alto Research Center
• In the 1970s, invented the GUI, the mouse, Ethernet, laser printing, and OOP
• Xerox failed to commercialize any of it; Apple and Microsoft built empires from those ideas

Y

Yanni

• Greek new-age keyboardist
• Live at the Acropolis (1993) became a PBS pledge-drive perennial
• One of the best-selling instrumental artists of the decade

[Yes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_(band)

• British progressive rock band
• Known for “Close to the Edge” and “Roundabout”
• Roger Dean’s fantastical album artwork

Z

[Ziggy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggy_(comic_strip)

• Tom Wilson’s single-panel newspaper strip since 1971
• Bald, pants-less, perpetually hapless everyman

[Zoom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_(1972_TV_series)

• PBS children’s show, 1972-1978
• Kids performed skits, sang songs, and spoke in “Ubbi Dubbi”