clipped from: www.informit.com 
Last updated Sep 8, 2006.
Flash was created in response to a need, the need to make animation on the Web a more enjoyable experience. At the dawn of the Web in those fuzzy, distant days of 1995, the only format for adding animation to a Web page was the notorious animated GIF. An animated GIF is essentially just a series of bitmap images sequenced together. The final file is large, less than spectacular in experience, and NOT interactive.
FutureWave, a small company of six people, sought to change this with a new product called FutureSplash. The following image is a screen shot from the very first release of FutureSplash.
