Tcl/Tk originated with Dr. John Ousterhout (pronounced "Oh'-stir-howt") while teaching at University of California, Berkeley, Califor nia. He actually started implementing it when he got back to Berkeley in the spring of 1988; by summer of that year it was in use in some internal applications, but there was no Tk. Read about the history of Tcl/Tk directly from its author 's words at www.scripti cs.com/scripting/tclHistory.html.
1989: The first external releases of Tcl and beginning of Tk imp lemention;
1991: First release of Tk;
1994: Dr. Ousterhout was hired by Sun Microsystems, Inc.: he was a Distinguished Engineer and led the Tcl project.
April/May 1997: the Sun research group responsible for Tcl devel opment were spun off into a Sun business group called SunScript. However, things chan ged again soon afterwards. You can read more about that evolution selecting "SunSc ript_story" at URL: Su nScript-Story .
August 1997: a Tcl Consortium was formed.
February 1998: Dr. Ousterhout left Sun to create Scriptics, a company dedicated to scripting tools, applications, and services. According to www.scriptics.com /about/news/qa.html, core Tcl and Tk remain free, with the team at Sun continuing work right now on Tcl/Tk 8.1. After the next release, the intention is that work on the core will migrate from Sun to Scriptics, with the Sun team will focus more on Tcl extensions and applications.
April 23, 1998: the Association for Computing Machinery ACM awarded the 1997 Software System Award to John Ousterhout and Scriptics ( www.acm.org/awards/). This award is given to an institution or individual recognized for developing a software system that has had a lasting influence, reflected in contributions to concept s, in commercial acceptance, or both.
