That wasn't it; There was nothing revolutionary about it. It was the most hyped/marketed language in History[1]. Sun threw ungodly amounts of money to market it and make it what it is today. Invented as a "Embedded Systems" language, pushed as a Browser "Applet" language, moved to "Server App" language and settled as a "Enterprise App" language.
I think the fact that it eventually ended up as a server app language took everybody by surprise - Sun never saw it as anything like that at inception I'm sure.
Adding JDBC and later nio is probably what got it there the most.
Yes. It was originally meant to be used for interactive television. It then transitioned to the web and to cross platform GUI's. It then transitioned to servers.
