An important development in
TLA theory occurred towards the end of the last century. In the early
1980s, a group of researchers realised that
TLA space was too small for further expansion -- the entire space size was only 17576; as few as 158 TLAs needed to be
randomly picked to get a high probability of
collision. This spurred the development of the ETLA -- "
Extended Three Letter Abbreviation" -- standard; ETLA was itself the first officially-sanctioned ETLA. With a space of 456976 points, it was felt that the demands of the burgeoning
computer industry could be met.
Further developments occurred when the current World Government (tm), then entitled Microsoft, increased TLA space by adding digits. In late 1996 the aptly-named W95 shook the world. People had been convinced Microsoft's TLA technology was too out-of-date to have a competitive chance; however, W95 and its successor W98 changed the TLA rules. Later, the WG introduced the EETLA (enhanced extended three letter abbreviation) which gave ample scope for technological development -- W95se and W2000 are fine examples of the immense scope of the new technology.