Thanks to some posts to the perl5-porters mailing list (February 12 1996) by 
Tom Christiansen ,  
Andy Dougherty ,  
and Hal Furuseth ;
we have a rough outline of Perl's release history:
-     1986 	perl0
-     1987	perl1
-     1988	perl2
-     1989	perl3
-     1991	perl4 (well, around Christmas 90, actually, I think)
-     1992	perl4.036
-     1993	perl5 alpha/beta (Only the very earliest alpha's were in '93.)
-     1994	perl5 production (perl5alpha7 came out on March 25, 1994; 
                         5.000 came out on October 17, 1994.)
-     1995 	perl5.001
-     1996	perl5.002