Help us Celebrate DE’s 15th Anniversary

1995: It was the year immediately following the debut of Netscape, transforming web surfing into a whole new experience. It also marked the launch of DVD as new media; the birth of Yahoo! and eBay; and the passing of The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia. If you’re a sci-fi movie buff, you might remember that, in the fictional time line of James Cameron’s Terminator movies, it was the year Skynet sent the robot assassin T-1000 to kill the human resistance leader John Connor.

At the time, Pro/ENGINEER was in Release 15, Siemens PLM Software was still known as UGS, SolidWorks was getting ready to ship its first release, and the memorable AutoCAD R14 was still two years away.

At the end of August, just as Windows 95 (codenamed Chicago) hit the store shelves, the premiere issue of Desktop Engineering (DE) went off to press. Cover lines for Volume 1, Issue 1 read:

• Your Changing Desktop: Micros have forever changed engineering, but the big changes have just begun.
• Build a Virtual Oscilloscope with Labwindows/CVI 3.1
• Designing Whitewater Rafts using CadKey

I’m also curious to know what you think the headlines might be in the next 15 years. What stories and product reviews do you think DE will be featuring on its cover in the Christmas 2025 issue? With our art director’s help, perhaps we’ll create a digital mockup of that cover.

Share your memories by either leaving comments here or by participating in the DE Anniversary Discussion at DE Exchange. If you dare, you may also upload images, either of yourself or of your CAD design circa 1995.

So do you remember where you were in 1995?