Java was developed by Sun Microsystems in the early-to-mid 1990’s, and development continues to this day, of course. Here are some of the more important milestones in the early history of the language.
- 1990: A team headed by James Gosling is set up to work on a programming language for consumer electronic devices.
- The goals were to develop a small language, that would easily adapt to new chips, and be very reliable.
- The language was originally known as Oak, but that name was already used, so it had to be changed.
- 1992: The team creates a project called Star 7 (*7), and develops a personal, hand-held remote control.
- The development team is incorporated as FirstPerson, Inc., but loses a bid to develop a TV set-top box for Time-Warner.
- 1994: The team notices the popularity of the web, which came along in 1993, and builds first web-enabled browser, WebRunner. Sun executives are impressed.
- May 23, 1995: At Sun World in San Francisco Sun Microsystems, Inc., formally announces Java 1.0, and Netscape also announces it will license Java for its browser.
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