Java was developed by Sun Microsystems in the early-to-mid 1990s, 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 langauage, 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.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.
- 1995 present: The rest of the world notices, programmers go bananas, and the rest, as they say, is history ...
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