The Standard Template Library (STL) was created by Alexander Stepanov in 1979 as the first library of generic algorithms and data structures for C++. It uses templates to provide compile-time polymorphism and efficiency. In 1998, the C++ standards committee published C++98, which included the STL. The STL achieves abstraction without loss of efficiency through its use of templates and by following the Von Neumann model of computation. It includes containers, algorithms, and I/O stream libraries.