When was the W3C HTML Validator launched?

Hello, I'm doing a bit of historical investigation and I'm curious about
the launch date of the HTML validator.

On the footer it says (C) 1994 but according to
http://validator.w3.org/whatsnew.html#v13 the first release is from
December 1997.

When was it made publicly available for the first time?

Thanks!
Jaime Iniesta