The first ECMAScript standard, ES1, was published in 1997. It was the first edition of ECMA-262, the specification created to standardize JavaScript and improve consistency among implementations.
JavaScript originated at Netscape, where Brendan Eich created the language in 1995. Netscape and Sun Microsystems announced JavaScript publicly that year, and Netscape later worked with Ecma International to formalize the language. The standards effort helped address compatibility concerns as browsers competed to implement scripting features.
ES1 was based on JavaScript 1.1, the version associated with Netscape Navigator 3.0. The name ECMAScript emerged as a compromise during standardization, rather than as a completely separate programming language. The first edition was adopted by the Ecma General Assembly in June 1997.
The next edition, ES2, followed in 1998 and mainly aligned the specification with an international ISO/IEC standard. ES3 arrived in 1999 with substantial additions, including regular expressions, improved string handling, exception handling with `try` and `catch`, and other language refinements. Much later, ES6 was released in 2015 and introduced the yearly edition naming convention, commonly called ECMAScript 2015.