Adobe Premiere Version History

Premiere 4.2
Perhaps the first version of Premiere to become widely popular. You can see it in use on this video from around 1996.
Author's note: This was the first version I purchased. It was still very early days in non-linear editing, and to run it properly I had to custom-build a PC that cost almost six months wages. I could still only edit about 5 minutes at a time, so longer projects were edited in chunks and recorded to analog tape linearly.

Premiere 5.0, 5.1
This release saw some fundamental changes to the interface. Many users balked at first but most came to prefer the new, more professional way of doing things. Version 5 was not particularly stable but version 5.1 fixed most of the problems.

Premiere 6.0, 6.01
This release was much easier on Premiere users, with essentially the same interface and plenty of improvements. New features included DV capture and web video output.

Premiere 6.5
A relatively minor release. New features included: Real-time previewing, new titling tool, new audio effects, DVD authoring.

Premiere Pro (AKA Premiere Pro 1, Premiere 7, PPRO)
A significant release, this version was promoted by Adobe as a transition to the fully-professional arena. This version did not offer support for the Mac, an unusual move which was eventually rectified in Premiere Pro CS3.

Premiere Pro 1.5
A number of minor additions and bug fixes. Really just a more stable version of PPRO.

Premiere Pro 2
A moderately significant release, included a new interface and lots of new features such as: Record-to-DVD, Multi-camera editing, scrolling timeline, improved color correction, GPU accelerated processing, native HD/HDV support, improved integration with other Adobe applications.

Premiere Pro CS3 (2007)
Relatively minor release, including a few nice features such as time remapping. Now ships with Adobe Encore CS3. This version also sees the welcome return of Mac support.

Premiere Pro CS4 (October 2008)
Again, not many new features but a solid upgrade. Improved format support, flexibility and efficient editing workflow.

Premiere Pro CS5 (April 2010)
Most notable for the Mercury Playback Engine which uses the GPU for render-less previewing. Various general enhancements with basically the same interface.

Premiere Pro CS6 (May 2012)
Quite a few changes to the interface. Introduction of Adobe Prelude and SpeedGrade. Three-way color corrector, adjustment layers, new preset browser, rolling shutter repair effect. Introduction of Adobe Creative Cloud.

Premiere Pro CC (June 2013)
Quite a few improvements and tweaks, but mostly fairly minor. Redesigned timeline, improved copy & paste for effects, Link & Locate, Lumetri Deep Color Engine, improved audio mixing, Mezzanine codecs and additional format support, improved multicam editing, Sync Settings, improved closed captions, Adobe Anywhere Integration, plus numerous other minor improvements.
Note: This was the first version of PPRO that was only available via the Creative Cloud subscription service.