Wikipedia says goes back even further than that: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_and_promises

However, what was (or is) using them as a core aspect of the framework 
besides Croquet/Cobalt?

Nothing gets shared in Croquet without using the future message and the 
ability to create things without sharing is relatively new, I thought.

Lawson

On 12/7/10 10:51 PM, Josh Gargus wrote:
> On Dec 7, 2010, at 4:21 PM, Lawson English wrote:
>
>> As usual, Qqueak gets there first, and then doesn't do anything interesting (for the masses), while other languages tout the "next big thing" without even knowing much about the history: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3148/#future-objects
> Futures/promises are definitely popular these days, but they weren't pioneered in Croquet.  Barbara Liskov typically gets the credit:
> http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=54016
>
> Cheers,
> Josh
>
>
>> Lawson
>>
>>
>>
>> On 12/7/10 2:00 AM, Lawson English wrote:
>>> On 12/6/10 6:49 PM, Tony Garnock-Jones wrote:
>>>> Speaking of...
>>>>
>>>> On 2010-12-06 6:35 PM, Eliot Miranda wrote:
>>>>> tea-time
>>>> ..., has it ever been pulled out into a form where it can be used separately from the rest of Croquet? I'd love to see it easily loadable into Smalltalk. Is there a tutorial on just using TeaTime on its own available anywhere?
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>>   Tony
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Don't I wish.
>>>
>>>
>>> Lawson
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>