- 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.
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