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This article focuses on Niklaus Wirth's development of Oberon in Zurich, Switzerland. According to Wirth, Oberon evolved from a project whose goal was the design of a modern, flexible and efficient operating system (OS) for a single-user workstation. The OS was initially designed in Modula-2, but Wirth felt that because Modula-2 allowed the use of variant record types, garbage collection would be difficult. Consequently he decided to design a new language that would provide other methods for extending record types. Wirth also wished to experiment with a minimalist approach to language design that emphasized mathematical purity. As a result, Oberon evolved from Modula-2 chiefly by subtracting features from Modula-2, although some new features were added. Some of the subtracted features include variant records, opaque data types, enumeration types, subrange types, reserved words CARDINAL and WITH, local modules. Although Oberon may not reach the same levels of commercial acceptance as Wirth's Pascal and Modula-2, it has already influenced designers of subsequent languages. Modula-3 was designed to provide OO extensions to Modula-2 as well as support for threads, exceptions and garbage collection.