James Gosling initiated the Java language project in June 1991 that time it was called “Oak “.
Later in 1995 first version of java (Java1.0) was released by Sun Microsystems.

In January 1995, Oak was renamed Java (as the name Oak was already in use), and developed into a robust programming language for buildingWWW-based applications. As a proof-of-concept, they developed a web browser known as HotJava (written in Java) that is capable of running miniJava applications ( known asApplets) that are embedded in WWW pages.This feature of HotJava was then taken up by Netscape and Microsoft. Later in 1995 Sun released the initial Java Development Kit (JDK) and HotJava.

From then on Java has become increasingly popular.