In 1969, Charles Goldfarb leads an IBM research project on integrated law office information systems. With E. Mosher and R. Lorie he invented the Generalized Markup Language (GML) as a means of allowing text editing, formatting, and information retrieval subsystems to share documents.
The first working draft of the SGML standard was published in 1980 by ANSI. By 1983, the sixth working draft is recommended as an industry standard (GCA 101-1983). Major adopters included US IRS and DoD.
A draft ISO standard was published in October 1985, and was adopted by the Office of Official Publications of the EU. Another year of review and comment resulted in the final text, which was published in record time after approval (ISO 8879:1986).