Why is Sun called Sun (or Sun Microsystems to be more precise)

Here is Fridays Why is blog, this week its

Why is Sun called Sun (or Sun Microsystems to be more precise)

I typed in sun first and google came back with a lot of sun fiery ball in the sky information. After typing in Sun Microsystems I got a bit more interesting information back. Once again Wikipedia saved the day but I also had a look at Suns homepage as well
Right I shall cut straight to the "Money Quote" as I like to call it

firstly Sun was founded in 1982 and the founders were graduates of Stanford University and the name SUN stands for Stanford university Network. It's lucky I wasted my university days boozing in pubs and clubs because I graduated from the University of Gloucester, Then I suppose UG is quite catchy. Although I used to work in a pub called the Two Pigs which would be a good name for something.

Okay that's the why what about the who. The founders where

Andy Bechtolsheim
Bill Joy
Vinod Khosla
Scott McNealy

Sun are famous amongst many other things for inventing Java (James Gosling) and a bit more recently they invented XML and then gave it away for nothing. To read a brief textual history go to the sun wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Microsystems

There is also a history on Sun's website which is more is done via landmarks found here http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/coinfo/history.html

the second history made me chortle where it says 1982 found, 1983 first big break and the quotes below are from the Sun's history

"Sun and Computervision sign a $40 million OEM agreement."

you could say that it was quite a big break. It's quite interesting reading Sun's background you wonder how and why they ever invented Java because before that they were and still are a successful hardware selling company. According to Sun's history the Java Revolution kicked off in 1995. The history is littered with unusual facts like also in 1995

"More than 100 Sun systems are used to render images for Disney's "Toy Story," the first all computer-generated feature film."

it ends in 2005 with

"Sun becomes largest business contributor to the global open source community with donation of 1,600 patents."

So that's a quick sprint on about sun. I thought I would end on a quote from their mission statement because when I was at the Java conference in England (yes they even come to England) the talker seemed to put a lot of emphasis on this statement, the mission statement can be found here http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/coinfo/mission.html

"Our Vision
Everyone and everything participating on the network."

Why not mention the logo is the logo which to quote wikipedia

"Sun's logo, which features four interleaved copies of the word sun, was designed by professor Vaughan Pratt, also of Stanford University. The initial version of the logo had the sides oriented horizontally and vertically, but it was subsequently redesigned so as to appear to stand on one corner."

finally this is quite interesting, its the first few days of working at sun by Tom Lyon. I always find it quite interesting to hear about the early days of now massive companies
http://www.lyon-about.com/sun.html