It all started as a research project at Sun Microsystems that was studying how to put computers into everyday household items to make them "smarter" and would be capable of communicating with each other.
Initially the project was using C++, but it was soon found that for the purposes of the project, this language had it's limitations.
James Gosling, a member of the research team went to work on designing a complete new language that he named Oak, in honour of a tree he could see outside his window.
This language was object-oriented but designed to be easier to learn and use than other object-oriented languages. Sun Microsystems described the key features of java as "A simple, object-oriented, distributed, interpreted, robust, secure, architecture neutral, protable, high performance, multiheaded and dynamic language." Programs written in Oak had to be platform independent because unlike computer owners, appliance consumers would not be looking for RAM and MHz when buying, say, a vacuum cleaner.
The team focused it's efforts on interactive TV, however, when deals did not materialise and TimeWarner chose SGI over theirs, the project was cut in half. The remaining team then focused on the internet as their platform independent language was well suited to this medium. It was later realised that the name for the language could not be trademarked, so after brainstorming sessions in 1995, Java won the name for the language.
Java Applets
Java Applets are programs you can include on your Web Site. You don't have to be a java programmer to create interactivity or effects in your web pages. There are many free and shareware applets available from the internet that you may download and incorporate into your web pages.
Some useful links are:
http://www.jars.com/
http://www.javapowered.com
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial
http://www.freewarejava.com/
http://www.captainjava.com/javamain.html
http://www.anfyteam.com/
http://www.mandomartis.a.se/essentialapplets/applets.html
http://www.imint.net/index.html
http://javapplets.com/
http://www.free-applets.com/
There are many more sites - find some more of your own to add to this list..