Niklaus Wirth created Oberon, which first appeared in 1988 as a successor to Modula-2.
Wirth developed Oberon at ETH Zurich with the goal of producing a simpler language and operating environment. Oberon removed several features from Modula-2, including enumerations, subrange types, and variant records, while retaining a compact structure and strong static typing.
The language was part of the broader Oberon project, which included the Oberon operating system and an integrated programming environment. This allowed the language, tools, and graphical environment to be designed together rather than as unrelated components.
Oberon is sometimes confused with Oberon-2. Oberon is the original language; Oberon-2 is a later extension that added features including type-bound procedures. Both belong to the same Wirth-led language family.