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Editorial
21 Jan 2023

25th Anniversary of EAS

The world of Star Trek was a very different one in the mid-1990's, a full generation of fans ago. I will always remember this as the one and only Golden Age, although after the end of TNG "only" two series, DS9 and Voyager, were on the air at the same time. I had to wait for the episodes at least half a year until they were released on VHS, but it didn't feel like I was left behind. It was a great time to be a Trek fan, especially if you were a nerd. The emerging internet was populated by tech-savvy people like me, who were sitting in front of bulky CRT monitors and were more or less patiently waiting for their downloads to complete. I personally had the advantage of a much faster connection at my university, but generally video streaming and most of the bandwidth-consuming pastimes of today were still a dream in the age of the 28.8 kBit/s modem. Every byte of data we could obtain was somehow precious. Smartphones or social networks would not exist until a decade later. Yet, information on Star Trek was relatively easy to come by if Altavista was your friend. While the studio and the network still mostly relied on traditional communication channels, plenty of fan websites provided pictures, episode reviews, production news and links to other sites. Star Trek in Sound and Vision, Sector 0-0-1, The STArchive, Maximum Defiant, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Mr. Video Productions were among my early favorites.

Following the previews and the speculation on the upcoming feature film "Star Trek: First Contact" and particularly the evolution of the Enterprise-E design in 1996 was my probably most impactful early internet experience. My real-life friends and I used to look up the news almost every day. This arguably fueled our anticipation of a new movie like never before and never again. Then "First Contact" was released, and we loved it! And that was just the start of the madness. It may be hard to believe in the digital age, but after purchasing the VHS cassette, my friend Thorsten and I knelt in front of TV, freeze-framed the movie and tried to sketch up the new ships with pencil and paper. After discussing the ship classes from "First Contact" and other technical issues with other fans in newsgroups and forums, some time in 1997 I felt like sharing my Trek knowledge and creating my own site. Incidentally, I had just started a job as a research assistant in the field of microelectronics. I argued that our university institute shouldn't be the last one without a website, and so my professor assigned the task to me. I began to learn a bit of HTML, or rather how to use the WYSIWYG editor Microsoft Frontpage, so I could kill two birds with one stone.

On 21 January 1998, I uploaded an effectively nameless site "Star Trek - by Bernd Schneider" to the university server - actually to an obscure sub-directory of the new institute website so it wouldn't raise too much unwanted attention. This initial version of the site consisted of pictures of six starships designed by me, a review of the Enterprise-E model (which I had bought in the NASM shop on a trip to an electronic devices conference in Washington D.C.), an outline of my later time travel analysis, a short list of inconsistencies (not even including the Klingon foreheads) and a few jokes. There were 43 files with a total size of 314 kilobytes.

Read the rest of the story: 25th Anniversary of EAS.

Bernd Schneider

Archive

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  • 22 Sep 2023
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  • 16 Sep 2023
    The conversion to HD screen caps is complete on the following pages: The Emblems of the Federation Founding Members, The Evolution of the Starfleet Medical Emblem and The Emblems of Earth Starfleet and Earth Starfleet Command.
  • 15 Sep 2023
    Here is my review of the latest Lower Decks episode LOW: "In the Cradle of Vexilon".
  • 10 Sep 2023
    Many new entries and images in the article with Observations in TNG: "The Best of Both Worlds I". Keep watching Jörg's Twitter account, where he is currently investigating Part II.
  • 09 Sep 2023
    Here is the missing review of LOW: "I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee", which I liked better than the season premiere. I am also updating various articles with facts from the recent episodes.
  • 08 Sep 2023
    Lower Decks returns with an episode that strives to celebrate all things Voyager. Here is my review of "Twovix". I have to postpone "I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee" until I find time for it.
  • 03 Sep 2023
    New or improved images can be found on the following pages: Starship Gallery - First Contact Vessels, Starship Gallery - Son'a, Redresses of the Type-9 Shuttle Cockpit and a few more with smaller changes.
  • 28 Aug 2023
    There are several new high-quality images in the Xindi Starship Gallery. I have also improved many old scans of Other Starfleet Ship Interiors, especially of the Defiant and Voyager.
  • 27 Aug 2023
    Here is a new article about Redresses of the Arkonian Warship. See how this CG design became the familiar Tellarite ship as it appeared only recently on Prodigy.
  • 26 Aug 2023
    While I'm further improving the galleries, here is a new essay by Andrew Gilbertson on the chronology and topography in Voyager's first two seasons: Fallen Federation - A Closer Look at Voyager's Early Journey.
  • 24 Aug 2023
    25 years ago, I began to scan images from publications. At the time, I didn't recognize that they usually had a greenish hue or I didn't compensate enough for it. Anyway, I have reworked over 600 gallery images by now, notably all of the popular Starfleet and alien bridge diagrams. Most of these are not simply color corrected but reconstructed from lossless master files, often also with higher resolution, that I found in an ancient backup.
  • 19 Aug 2023
    New screen caps and other updates in a few more articles: A Close Look at 22nd Century Technology, Locating Starfleet Buildings in San Francisco, Biography Inconsistencies.
  • 16 Aug 2023
    The starships from Strange New Worlds season 2 are in the database now: Discoverse Federation Ship Classes, Discoverse Klingon Ship Classes, Discoverse Alien Ship Classes.
  • 15 Aug 2023
    A small new article looks at the Redresses of the Mazarite Shuttle, with observations by Jörg and illustrations by Alice.
  • 14 Aug 2023
    Many new images in the Romulan Starship Gallery, in particular high-quality orthographic and angled views. There are also updates on more than a dozen pages with facts from recent episodes.
  • 11 Aug 2023
    The Gorn are back in the SNW season 2 finale "Hegemony". I appreciate that the episode comes with a good deal of action for a change. But there are some story and character developments that I'm not happy with.
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