Java™ How to Program, Seventh Edition

1.9. History of Java

The microprocessor revolution’s most important contribution to date is that it made possible the development of personal computers, which now number about a billion worldwide. Personal computers have profoundly affected people’s lives and the ways organizations conduct and manage their business.

Microprocessors are having a profound impact in intelligent consumer-electronic devices. Recognizing this, Sun Microsystems in 1991 funded an internal corporate research project code-named Green, which resulted in a C++-based language that its creator, James Gosling, called Oak after an oak tree outside his window at Sun. It was later discovered that there already was a computer language by that name. When a group of Sun people visited ...