Why are System.out/err implemented as Byte Streams in Java?

Question

I was having a look at this tutorial at Sun on command line I/O. It stated that:

You might expect the Standard Streams to be character streams, but, for historical reasons, they are byte streams. System.out and System.err are defined as PrintStream objects. Although it is technically a byte stream, PrintStream utilizes an internal character stream object to emulate many of the features of character streams.

Does any one know what "the historical reasons" are?

Answer 1

The "historical reasons" are that character streams did not exist in Java 1.0. Apparently Sun realized that the character translation model was insufficient and the Character oriented Reader/Writer class hierarchy was added in Java 1.1.

But it was too late for System.out and friends.