Twenty years is a long time in the technology industry – trends come and go, products appear then disappear and even major shows and publications change their focus…The Java Card Forum has seen many changes over the years – not least in the Java Card platform itself, and some of those milestones have been documented in the press.

Publications

Remember Card Technology magazine? It was THE publication for the smart card industry with journalists like Dan Balaban and Thad Rueter digging for the truth. There was certainly a lot of coverage concerning Java Card over the years, and even a cover story featuring Bertrand du Castel (first Technical Committee Chairman) as “Visionary of the Year”.

We have the text from one of Dan Balaban’s articles entitled “Java Card and the new era for smart cards”, published in Card Technology Issue November 2004, Volume 9, number 12, where he discusses how the Java Card platform is set to revolutionise the usage of smart cards in the future.
Download the article here (reprinted with kind permission by the author)

The JCF also received coverage in Card Technology Today and CardsNow!Asia about the enhancements to the Java Card specification with the 3.x release. There was a real sense of excitement with the new release, as the platform could move beyond the standard smart card environment to a variety of different form factors.

• Card Technology Today, June 2007 (published by Elsevier)
  Chip Talk – Talking the Java Language (by Frédéric Leclef, Business Committee chairman 2007)
• CardsNow!Asia, July/August 2008, vol 9, number 4 (published by Terra-Ju Media Group Sdn Bhd )
  The Release of Java Card 3.0 (Distributed with kind permission of the publisher)

Personal blogs/articles

Those involved in the Forum have also documented their personal opinions about the technology, the companies involved and the industry.

Bertrand du Castel, one of the “founding fathers” of the Java Card Forum has written a very personal history of his involvement with the production of the first Java Card and the subsequent formation of the Java Card Forum, which can be downloaded here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259361072_Personal_History_of_the_Java_Card(Distributed with kind permission by the author)

Eric Vétillard, who took over the post of Technical Chair from Bertrand, has been writing a blog for many years now, entitled “On the road to Bandol”: http://javacard.vetilles.com (Bandol being the internal name that was given to Java Card version 3.0 within Sun – as well as a French town). Here he shares his personal views on Java Card technology and now more recently, the IoT market. He has also provided some Java Card tutorials: http://javacard.vetilles.com/tutorial/.

Company Press Releases

We’ve even dug into company archives to find some of the Press Releases from the early days, including the very first Press Release about the formation of the JCF.

• First Press Release about JCF formation: Leading Smart Card Manufacturers Announce Formation of Java Card Forum – Industry initiative endorsed by Sun, creator of the JavaTM Card API standard (12 Feb 1997)
• Sun Introduces New Java Card Programs to Accelerate Worldwide Adoption of Smart Cards (18 Nov, 2003)
• [In German] Orga selects Java Card solutions for Telecoms market (08 Jun, 2004)