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9780199309412

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This is a fascinating reflection on a new academic discipline. It is an intellectual and cultural story woven round the history of automatic computation from 1819 to 1969. Center-stage is the stored-program paradigm, which emerged between 1945 and 1949. The theoretical abstractions created by Alan Turing in 1936 may have shaped the paradigm but Computer Science did not come into its own until after Turing's death, with the gradual accretion of sub-paradigms such as finite automata, systems architecture, declarative programming and artificial intelligence. Taking an even-handed view of developments on either side of the Atlantic, this book is a valuable counterpoint to shallower histories of the subject. -- Simon Lavington, Emeritus Professor, University of Essex It Began with Babbage provides a wealth of background on the early history of computing - its people, ideas and systems - too much of which I should have known but didn't, or had somewhat askew. It both explores the relationships that drove this history and explains in an admirably accessible style the key ideas that enabled it. -- Paul Rosenbloom, author of On Computing; Professor, Department of Computer Science and Institute for Creative Technologies, University of Southern California Dasgupta provides a comprehensive, enlightening history of the emergence of computer science as a new scientific paradigm... Highly recommended. --Choice

This is a fascinating reflection on a new academic discipline. It is an intellectual and cultural story woven round the history of automatic computation from 1819 to 1969. Center-stage is the stored-program paradigm, which emerged between 1945 and 1949. The theoretical abstractions created by Alan Turing in 1936 may have shaped the paradigm but Computer Science did not come into its own until after Turing's death, with the gradual accretion of sub-paradigms such as finite automata, systems architecture, declarative programming and artificial intelligence. Taking an even-handed view of developments on either side of the Atlantic, this book is a valuable counterpoint to shallower histories of the subject. -- Simon Lavington, Emeritus Professor, University of Essex It Began with Babbage provides a wealth of background on the early history of computing - its people, ideas and systems - too much of which I should have known but didn't, or had somewhat askew. It both explores the relationships that drove this history and explains in an admirably accessible style the key ideas that enabled it. -- Paul Rosenbloom, author of On Computing; Professor, Department of Computer Science and Institute for Creative Technologies, University of Southern California

"One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles, 2014. ""This is a fascinating reflection on a new academic discipline. It is an intellectual and cultural story woven round the history of automatic computation from 1819 to 1969. Center-stage is the stored-program paradigm, which emerged between 1945 and 1949. The theoretical abstractions created by Alan Turing in 1936 may have shaped the paradigm but Computer Science did not come into its own until after Turing's death, with the gradual accretion of sub-paradigms such as finite automata, systems architecture, declarative programming and artificial intelligence. Taking an even-handed view of developments on either side of the Atlantic, this book is a valuable counterpoint to shallower histories of the subject."" -- Simon Lavington, Emeritus Professor, University of Essex ""It Began with Babbage provides a wealth of background on the early history of computing - its people, ideas and systems - too much of which I should have known but didn't, or had somewhat askew. It both explores the relationships that drove this history and explains in an admirably accessible style the key ideas that enabled it."" -- Paul Rosenbloom, author of On Computing; Professor, Department of Computer Science and Institute for Creative Technologies, University of Southern California ""Dasgupta provides a comprehensive, enlightening history of the emergence of computer science as a new scientific paradigm... Highly recommended."" --Choice"

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Subrata Dasgupta is a scholar, teacher, and author. He holds the Computer Science Trust Fund Eminent Scholar Chair in the School of Computing & Informatics, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where he also teaches in the Department of History. For the past thirty years he has studied and written on the historical and cognitive nature of creativity in various fields including computer science, design theory, cultural and intellectual movements, science, technology, and art. He is the author of thirteen previous books, including Technology and Creativity and Jagadis Chandra Bose and the Indian Response to Western Science, both published by Oxford University Press, and a childhood memoir, Salaam Stanley Matthews.

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