Key Points in Early History

Aug 1993 Debian 0.01 released 
Jan 1994 Debian 0.91 released
The Debian Linux Manifesto
simple package manager
about 12 contributors, last "one-man release"
Mar 1995 Debian 0.93R5 released
concept of explicit package maintainers
dpkg introduced
Nov 1995 Debian 0.93R6 released
dselect introduced
about 60 contributors
Jun 1997 Debian Social Contract
Jul 1998 Debian 2.0 released
first non-ia32 architecture (m68k) supported