1). Java was created in 1991 by James Gosling and others at Sun Microsystems to be a portable, platform-independent language for the internet. It took 18 months to develop the first working version.
2). Java applets allowed small programs to be downloaded and run securely in web browsers, while servlets extended server functionality dynamically. Bytecode enabled portability across platforms.
3). Object-oriented programming is central to Java. Key principles include encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism. Classes define structure and behavior for objects.