It all started with a
  blunt letter.

  In 1990, Sun Microsystems software engineer Patrick Naughton was fed
  up with trying to support the hundreds of different combinations of
  software APIs used within the company. When he told CEO and friend
  Scott McNealy of his plans to accept a job offer from NeXT, McNealy
  didn't take the news sitting down. He asked Naughton to create a list of
  his complaints and to suggest a solution "as if you were God."

  When Naughton created his list, he didn't pull any punches about Sun's
  shortcomings. Naughton said the NeWS software architecture the
  company was working on should be scrapped, and he suggested that of
  the more than one hundred people working in the Window Systems
  Group at that time, most of them wouldn't be needed if Sun straightened
  out the technical mess. After Naughton sent the letter to McNealy, he
  figured it would be ignored. "Why should I care?" he asked himself. "I'm
  leaving anyway."

  Much to Naughton's surprise, the letter did make a difference. Quietly, it
  was e-mailed to many of Sun's top software engineers. Naughton's e-mail
  box was flooded with messages from colleagues who agreed with his
  assessment of the company's situation. Bill Joy, a Sun founder, and James
  Gosling, Naughton's mentor at Sun, supported his views and added fuel to
  the fire by raising many of the same concerns to other senior executives.

  The day Naughton was to leave for NeXT, Sun made him a counter offer.
  The company would create a team of top software developers and free
  them to do whatever they wanted. The only expected deliverable: make
  something cool.

  The team of six, codenamed Green, went into a self-imposed exile, very
  much like the scientists on the Manhattan Project. The team stocked the
  refrigerator with Cokes and Dove bars; discussed what they liked and
  didn't like about the technologies that were out on the market; and took
  apart countless electronic devices, such as Nintendo Game Boys, TV
  set-top boxes and remote controls.

  The reason for this free-form exploration of Nintendos and other
  consumer electronic devices was to find a way for the appliances to talk
  to each other. The team discovered early on that electronic devices such
  as VCR's, laser disc players, and stereos were all made with different
  CPU's. Thus if a manufacturer wanted to add functions or features to a
  TV or VCR, they were stuck because they were limited by what the
  hardware and its wired-in programming would allow them to do. This,
  coupled with the fact that the chips used by many of these devices were
  limited in program space, suggested a fresh approach to software
  programming that might be a key to enabling innovation in this product
  space.

  The team's efforts kicked off the development of a new object-oriented
  programming language that Gosling called Oak, after the tree outside his
  window. Loosely based on C++, the language was stripped down to a
  bare minimum in order to be compatible with the limited space the chips in
  handheld devices would offer, and was designed to allow programmers to
  more easily support dynamic, changeable hardware.

            As work on Oak continued, the Green team conducted
            extensive research into how and why people were
            attracted to certain video games and how they interacted
            with various kinds of electronic equipment. After collecting
  their research data, the team developed a handheld, remote-control-like
  device with a tiny visual interface. The device, dubbed "*7", featured an
  animated character named "Duke" who helped guide users through the
  easy-to-use, image rich, graphical interface remote control. Central to the
  design of the *7 was the conviction that the interface must be engaging
  and fun to use, and that the device itself must be a small, personal artifact.
  "Duke," created by Joe Palrang, would go on to become Java's mascot.

  Sun turned the Green team into a wholly owned company called First
  Person. The new Operating Company had an interesting concept but still
  no idea what to do with it. After struggling to come up with a marketable
  idea, the company decided to pursue the interactive television market that
  seemed to be emerging.

  A deal with Time-Warner to create set-top boxes fell through at the last
  minute. Another potential deal with 3DO was scrapped when that
  company's chief executive wanted exclusive rights to the technology. Thus
  First Person's foray into creating set-top boxes for video-on-demand
  fizzled.

  The company's fortune's changed in 1993 when the National Center for
  Supercomputing Applications introduced Mosaic, and the World Wide
  Web was born. More web technology soon followed, and the Internet,
  formerly a home only to computer scientists and educators, began to
  bustle with traffic.

  In early 1994 the First Person team recommended focusing its limited
  resources on a software system for online multimedia. Bill Joy took that
  initiative further by positioning Oak as a "language based operating
  system" and took up Naughton's suggestion to give it away in source form
  on the Internet. The Oak language itself became the product, instead of
  part of a device. Arthur van Hoff wrote an Oak compiler entirely in Oak
  instead of in C. Naughton and Jonathan Payne built an Oak-ready
  browser called "WebRunner." The first applet -- Duke waving back at his
  parents over the Internet -- was born.

  Sun backed the decision to give the language away, but not before
  renaming it Java. Much has been made of the now famous name but
  consider the fact that it could have been called Neon, Lyric, Pepper or
  Silk.

  With Java in the hands of the Internet community at large, all that was
  needed was a way to run Java applets. "WebRunner" was renamed the
  HotJava browser because of a trademark conflict. Then, Netscape began
  supporting Java. Now millions are Java-ready, and Duke has never
  looked back.

  So what exactly is Java?

  It is commonly thought of as a way to make Web pages sexy --
  incorporating stock tickers, sound or video into Web pages. It has
  evolved into much more. It is becoming known as a computing platform --
  the base upon which software developers can build applications.
  Developers can build a variety of applications using Java -- traditional
  spreadsheets and word processors in addition to mission critical
  applications used by the biggest companies: accounting, asset
  management, databases, human resources and sales.

  Java applications, or applets, are different from ordinary applications in
  that they reside on the network in centralized servers. The network
  delivers the applet to your system when you request them. For example,
  let's say that you want to check your personal financial portfolio. You'd
  dial in to your financial institution and use your Web browser to log into
  the bank's system. The portfolio data will be shipped to you along with the
  applet needed to view it. Let's assume that you're considering moving your
  money from one account to another. No need to perform a series of
  cut-and-paste exercises. The system will also send you an applet that will
  allow you to change the rate of interest and length of investment to
  perform a series of "what-if" scenarios.

  From the corporations' point-of-view, Java will simplify the creation and
  deployment of applications thus saving money. Applications created in
  Java can be deployed without modification to any computing platform,
  thus saving the costs associated with developing software for multiple
  platforms. And because the applications are stored on centralized servers,
  there is no longer a need to have people insert disks or ship CD's to
  update software.

  So what will the future hold for companies and their use of Java? Only
  time will tell, but one thing is certain -- it's unlikely that letters such as the
  one written by Patrick Naughton complaining about multiple and
  incompatible software APIs will ever need to be sent again.



  For a more detailed history, read Michael O'Connell's SunWorld
  Magazine story Java: The Inside Story, and David Bank's HotWired
  account, The Java Saga.

  Fortune Magazine has an excellent introduction to the swirling business
  currents surrounding Sun and Java in Sun's Java: The Threat To Microsoft
  Is Real by Brent Schlender.