1991年，SUN MicroSystem公司的Jame Gosling、Bill Joe等人的研究小组针对消费电子产品开发应用程序，由于消费电子产品种类繁多，各类产品乃至同一类产品所采用的处理芯片和操作系统也不相同，就出现了编程语言的选择和跨平台的问题。当时最流行的编程语言是C和C++语言，但对于消费电子产品而言并不适用，安全性也存在问题。于是该研究小组就着手设计和开发出一种称之为Oak(即一种橡树的名字)语言。由于Oak在商业上并未获得成功，当时也就没有引起人们的注意。

-In 1991, SUN MicroSystem, Jame Gosling, Bill Joe s research group for consumer electronic product development and application, because of consumer electronic product variety, all kinds of products and the same products used by the processor and operating system is not the same, it is the choice of programming language and cross platform issues. At that time the most popular programming language is the C language and C++, but is not suitable for consumer electronic products, safety problems. So the research team began to design and develop a called Oak (i.e., an oak name) language. Because Oak has not been successful in business, there was no attention.