This account of the history of Java is based on an outline put
together by Patrick Naughton, co-author ofthe HotJava browser and current
VP of technology at Starwave Corp.
- January 15, 1991
- "Stealth Project"
(as named by Scott McNealy) brainstorming meeting in Aspen with Bill
Joy, Andy Bechtolsheim, Wayne Rosing, Mike Sheridan, James Gosling and
Patrick Naughton.
- February 1, 1991
- Gosling, Sheridan,
and Naughton begin work in earnest. Naughton focuses on "Aspen"
graphics system, Gosling on programming language ideas, Sheridan on
business development.
- June 1991
- Gosling starts working on the
"Oak" interpreter, which, several years later (following a trademark
search), is renamed "Java."
- August 19, 1991
- Green team
demonstrates basic user interface ideas and graphics system to Sun
co-founders Scott McNealy and Bill Joy.
- Summer 1992
- Massive amounts of
hacking on Oak, and related components.
- October 1, 1992
- Wayne Rosing joins from
SunLabs (which had formed in July 1990) and assumes management of the team.
- March 15, 1993
- The development team,
now incorporated as FirstPerson, focuses on
interactive television after learning about Time Warner's RFP for its
interactive cable TV trial in Orlando, FL.
- April, 1993
- NCSA Mosaic 1.0, the
first graphical browser for the Internet, is released.
- June 14, 1993
- Time Warner goes with
SGI for its interactive cable TV trial, despite acknowledged
superiority of Sun technology and assurances in mid-April that Sun won
the deal.
- Summer, 1993
- Naughton flies 300,000
miles selling Oak to anyone involved in consumer electronics and
interactive television; meanwhile, the rate at which people are gaining
access to the Internet reaches breakneck speed.
- August, 1993
- After months of
promising negotiations with 3DO to provide set-top box OS, 3DO president
Trip Hawkins offers to buy the technology outright. McNealy refuses, and
deal falls through.
- September, 1993
- Arthur Van Hoff joins
team, originally to do application development environment aimed at
interactive television; ends up doing mostly language design.
- February 17, 1994
- Alternative
FirstPerson business plan for doing CD-ROM/online multimedia platform
based on Oak presented to Sun executives to very mixed reviews.
- April 25, 1994
- Sun Interactive
created, half of FirstPerson employees leave to join it.
- June, 1994
- "Liveoak" project
started. Designed by Bill Joy to use Oak for a big small
operating system project.
- July, 1994
- Naughton reduces the
"Liveoak" project's scope to simply retargeting Oak at the Internet
after writing a throwaway implementation of a Web browser in a long
weekend hack.
- September 16, 1994
- Jonathon Payne and
Naughton
start writing "WebRunner," a Mosaic-like browser later renamed
"HotJava"
- September 29, 1994
- HotJava prototype
is first demonstrated to Sun executives.
- Autumn, 1994
- Van Hoff implements Java
compiler in Java. (Gosling had previously implemented it in
C.)
- May 23, 1995
- Sun formally announces
Java and HotJava at SunWorld '95.
- May 23, 1995
-
Netscape announces its intention to license Java for use in Netscape
browser.
- September 21, 1995
-
Sun-sponsored Java development conference held in New York City.
- September 25, 1995
-
Sun announces expanded alliance with Toshiba and a joint project to
develop remote information retrieval products which incorporate Java.
- September 26, 1995
-
Sunsoft announces suite of business-oriented development products
incorporating Java.
- October 30, 1995
-
Oracle announces its WebSystem suite of WWW software which includes a
Java-compatible browser.
- October 30, 1995
-
At the Internet World Conference in Boston, Lotus Development Corp., Intuit
Inc., Borland International Inc.,
Macromedia Inc.,and Spyglass Inc. announce plans to license Java.
- December 4, 1995
-
Sun and Netscape announce Javascript, a scripting language based on
the Java language which is designed to be accessible to
non-programmers.
- December 4, 1995
-
Sun, Netscape and Silicon Graphics announce new software alliance to
develop Internet interactivity tools.
- December 4, 1995
-
Borland, Mitsubishi Electronics, Sybase and Symatec annouce plans to license
Java.
- December 6, 1995
-
IBM and Adobe announce licensing agreement with Sun for use of Java.
- December 7, 1995
-
Microsoft announces plans to license Java during announcement of suite of
new Internet products, including Visual Basic Script.