Object Linking and Embedding is a protocol created in 1990.

Object Linking & Embedding (OLE) is a proprietary technology developed by Microsoft that allows embedding and linking to documents and other objects. For developers, it brought OLE Control Extension (OCX), a way to develop and use custom thing of users using interface elements. On a technical level, an OLE object is any object that implements the IOleObject interface, possibly along with a wide range of other interfaces, depending on the object's needs.. Read more on Wikipedia...

• Object Linking and Embedding Wikipedia page
• Object Linking and Embedding first developed in Microsoft