The Linux Tcl and Tk HOWTO

2. Tcl/Tk History

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.

2.1 Cronology

• 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.