Update: The "VPL Research" Wikipedia page gets the acronym expansion and citation wrong (the transcripts of the videos it cites don't actually say what VPL stands for).
However Jaron himself settled this in "Virtually There" (Scientific American, April 2001). The September 1984 Scientific American cover used one of his visual programming experiments as its illustration, an editor called in a panic because contributors must list an affiliation, and:
"I blurted out 'VPL Research' (for Visual Programming Language, or Virtual Programming Language), and thus was born VPL. After the issue's publication, investors came calling, and a company came to exist in reality."
Both expansions, singular "Language", Visual first — the company was named after the visual programming language, not the other way around.
Jaron's September 1984 Scientific American Cover (and check out the authors of the featured articles!):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VPL_Research
However Jaron himself settled this in "Virtually There" (Scientific American, April 2001). The September 1984 Scientific American cover used one of his visual programming experiments as its illustration, an editor called in a panic because contributors must list an affiliation, and:
"I blurted out 'VPL Research' (for Visual Programming Language, or Virtual Programming Language), and thus was born VPL. After the issue's publication, investors came calling, and a company came to exist in reality."
Both expansions, singular "Language", Visual first — the company was named after the visual programming language, not the other way around.
Jaron's September 1984 Scientific American Cover (and check out the authors of the featured articles!):
https://www.scientificamerican.com/issue/sa/1984/09-01/
Jaron's April 2001 Scientific American Article: Virtually There -- Three-dimensional tele-immersion may eventually bring the world to your desk
https://www.scientificamerican.com/issue/sa/2001/04-01/
Wikipedia's "Virtual Programming Languages" citation is a C-SPAN page that's just a video listing and never expands the acronym at all.
https://www.jaronlanier.com/cocodexintro/lanier01sciam.pdf
I suggested an edit, if anyone wants to apply it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:VPL_Research#What_VPL_Sta...