The Java programming language was designed by James Gosling and others at Sun Microsystems. The language, arising from a project that began in 1990, was originally called Oak and was intended for use in a device affectionately referred to as a set-top box. The set-top box was intended to be a small computational device, attached to a network of some kind, and placed on top of a television set. There are various features a set-top box might provide. You can imagine some of your own by supposing that a web browser is displayed on your television set and, instead of a keyboard, you click on icons by using some buttons on your remote control. You might want to select a television program or movie or download a small computer simulation that could be executed on the computational device and displayed on your screen. A television advertisement for an automobile might allow you to download an interactive visual tour of the automobile, giving each viewer a personalized simulation of driving the car down the road. Whatever scenario might appeal to you, the computing environment would involve graphics, execution of simple programs, and communication between a remote site and a program executed locally.

At some point in the development of Oak, engineers and managers at Sun Microsystems realized that there was an immediate need for an Internet-browser programming language, a language that could be used to write small applications that could be transmitted over the network and executed under the control of any standard browser on any standard platform.