Lesson #1

Introduction to
Computer Science
Slide #1 CPS118 – Lesson #1 – Introduction and History
 Computer Science
Computer science or computing
science (abbreviated CS or
CompSci) is the scientific and
practical approach to
computation and its
applications.

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 CS Subfields
Some fields, such as computational
complexity theory are highly abstract, other
fields such as computer graphics emphasize
real-world visual applications.

Other fields focus on the challenges in

implementing computation and human-
computer interfaces.

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 A important discipline
Computer science has made a number of
fundamental contributions to science and
society.

Along with electronics, it is a founding

science of the current epoch of human
history called the Information Age and a
driver of the Information Revolution.

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 What about Computer Science?
The term "computer science" appears in a 1959 article
in Communications of the ACM, in which Louis Fein
(then at Purdue University) argues for the creation of a
Graduate School in Computer Sciences.

Despite its name, a significant amount of computer

science does not involve the study of computers
themselves but mostly how to use them. Because of
this, certain departments of major universities prefer
the term computing science, to emphasize precisely
that difference.

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 Synonyms of Computer Science
In Europe, terms derived from contracted
translations of the expression "automatic
information" (e.g. "informazione automatica" in
Italian) or "information and mathematics" are often
used, e.g. informatique (French), Informatik
(German), informatica (Italy), informática (Spain,
Portugal) or informatika (Slavic languages) are also
used and have also been adopted in the UK
(informatics).

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 What about Computer Science?

“Computer science is no
more about computers
than astronomy is about
telescopes.”
Edsger Dijkstra

It is really about the use of computers.

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 Computer Science Contributions
Cryptography – Scientific Computing

In cryptography, breaking the Enigma code was an

important factor contributing to the Allied victory in
World War II. It is also the engine behind online
banking and secure data transfers.

Scientific computing enables advanced study of the

mind, and mapping of the human genome has
become possible with the Human Genome Project.

To this day, some of the most powerful computer

systems on Earth are used for weather forecasts.
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 Computer Science Contributions
Computer Graphics

Computer graphics and computer-generated

imagery have become almost ubiquitous in
modern entertainment, particularly in
television, cinema, advertising, animation
and video games. Even films that feature no
explicit CGI are usually "filmed" now on
digital cameras, or edited or postprocessed
using a digital video editor.

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 Computer Science Contributions
Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is becoming

increasingly important as it is getting smarter
and more complex. There are many
applications of AI, some of which can be seen
at home: like robotic vacuum cleaners,
interior climate control systems, and in video
games; or on the modern battlefield: like
drones, anti-missile systems, and squad
support robots.
Slide #10 CPS118 – Lesson #1 – Introduction and History
 Artificial Intelligence

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 Areas of Computer Science
Theoretical Computer Science

The broader field of theoretical computer science

encompasses both the classical theory of
computation and a wide range of other topics that
focus on the more abstract, logical, and
mathematical aspects of computing.

The study of the theory of computation is focused on

answering fundamental questions about what can be
computed and what amount of resources are required to
perform those computations.

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 Areas of Computer Science
Algorithms – Data Structures – Programming Languages

Algorithms and data structures: Branch of theoretical comp

sci concerned with how a computer can be used to solve a
problem and the way data must be organized (structured) to
enable fast solutions to be implemented.
An area related to data structures is computational geometry
where geometric figures need to be identified and combined
efficiently, such as for CAD/CAM (Computer Aided
Design/Computer Aided Manufacturing)

Programming language theory: Deals with the design,

implementation, analysis, characterization, and classification
of programming languages and their individual features. It is
an active research area, with numerous dedicated academic
journals.
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 Areas of Computer Science
Computer Architecture and Engineering

The study of computer architecture focuses

largely on the way by which the central
processing unit performs internally, accessing
addresses in memory, and the forms that the
machine level languages (assembly languages)
controlling these units are designed to
exponentially enhance computational
performance as generations of computers
progress.

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 Computer Architecture and Engineering

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 Areas of Computer Science
Databases – Information Retrieval – Health Informatics

Databases and information retrieval: A database is

intended to organize, store, and retrieve large
amounts of data easily. Digital databases are
managed using database management systems to
store, create, maintain, and search data, through
database models and query languages.

Health Informatics: Deals with computational

techniques for solving problems in health care. They
typically use large databases of health-related
information.

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 Areas of Computer Science
Information Science

Information science (or information studies): An

interdisciplinary field primarily concerned with the
analysis, collection, classification, manipulation,
storage, retrieval, movement, and dissemination of
information.

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 Areas of Computer Science
Internet of Things (IoT)
The inter-
networking of
physical devices,
called smart
devices through a
common network
like the Internet:
appliances,
vehicles,
electronics,
transponders and
many more.

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 Areas of Computer Science
Software Engineering

The study of designing, implementing, and

modifying software in order to ensure it is of
high quality, scale-able, affordable,
maintainable, and fast to build.

Both computer application software engineers

and computer systems software engineers are
projected to be among the fastest growing
occupations.

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 A few programming languages
Fortran 1954 Scientific applications
Lisp 1958 Artificial intelligence applications
Cobol 1959 Business applications
Algol 1960 The first structured language
Basic 1964 Microcomputer applications
Pascal 1968 For teaching programming
C 1972 Based on UNIX
SmallTalk 1972 The first object-oriented language
Ada 1979 The language of the US DND
C++ 1983 Another object-oriented language
Python 1989 General-purpose high-level language
Java 1994 Another object-oriented language
Swift 2014 A newer language developed by Apple
Slide #20 CPS118 – Lesson #1 – Introduction and History
 Cloud and Fog Computing
Software applications like MATLAB can be installed
locally unto a client’s computer but can also be
accessed through a virtual application in something
we call a cloud.
Cloud Computing is the practice of using a network of
remote servers hosted on the Internet to store,
manage, and process data, rather than a local server
or a personal computer.
In 2015, a new technology was introduced called Fog
Computing. It refers to extending cloud computing to
the edge of an enterprise's network. Also known as
Edge Computing or fogging, fog computing facilitates
the operations between end devices and cloud
computing data centers.
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 The History
of Computing

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 50000 to 20000 B.C.E.
Computing with digits,
pebbles and bones.

pebble = calculus

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 6000 B.C.E.
In the Indian Vedah, a verse (Richa) mentions
the numerals of 12 (dwawash), 2 (treemi),
and 300 (trishat). That was one of the
earliest recordings of a decimal numeral
system

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 2000 B.C.E.
First use of the abacus

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 780-850
Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi
Persian mathematician, astronomer and geographer
working in Baghdad introduced the positional decimal
system and the use of zero into Arabic mathematics.

About a thousand years later Ada

Lovelace honoured him when she coined
the word Algorithm.

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 1642
At age 19, Blaise Pascal
invents the first calculator:
the pascaline.

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 1670

Gotfried von Leibniz invents a

more advanced calculator that
can perform square roots.

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 1780

Benjamin Franklin
discovers electricity.

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 1804
Joseph-Marie Jacquard builds the first automatic
weaving loom programmed with punched cards.

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 1832
Charles Babbage invents the analytical machine.

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 1832
Babbage’s machine

1832
(was built but was never functional)
1991
(rebuilt from specifications by MIT students)

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 1815-1852
Ada Augusta Byron, Countess of
Lovelace, is the first to design
programs using punched cards
for Babbage’s machine.

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 1854
George Boole creates
the algebra that bears
his name today
(boolean).

AND TRUE FALSE

TRUE TRUE FALSE
FALSE FALSE FALSE

OR TRUE FALSE
TRUE TRUE TRUE
FALSE TRUE FALSE

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 1874

The QWERTY keyboard,

was present on the very
first typewriter... the
Sholes & Glidden, made by
E. Remington & Sons in
1874.

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 1890
Herman Hollerith invents a system to tabulate the data
of the great American census of 1890 (at that time the
tabulations for 1880 census were not even finished yet).
In FORTRAN, the character H was named in his honour.

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 Hollerith’s tabulating machine
The information is first recorded on punched cards and
then treated with electric sensors.

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 August 1890
Hollerith’s machine
makes front page of
Scientific American.

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 1896
Hollerith establishes
his own corporation,
the Tabulating
Machine Company.

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 1911
TMC merges with two other corporations and
becomes the Computing Tabulating Recording Co.
also known as CTR.

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 1924
CTR is renamed International Business Machines
Corporation after appointing Thomas J. Watson as
general manager. It is better known today as IBM.

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 1937
Claude Shannon
publishes A Symbolic
Analysis of Relays and
Switching Circuits,
where he shows that
Boole’s algebra may be
used in electrical
systems.

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 1937
Alan Mathison Turing defines
the notion of algorithm and
introduces the concept of the
universal machine now known
as « Turing machines ».

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 1939
John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry
conceive a digital computer using
electromagnetic relays.

Atanasoff 1938 Atanasoff 1990 Berry 1962

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 1939-1945
During WWII, Germany
used the Enigma
machine to encode its
transmissions.

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 1943
A team of the British Code and Cipher School builds
a machine to decode the messages. It was called
Colossus.

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 1943
Howard Aiken and a team from IBM build the
first complete universal computer that is fully
reliable and operational. The Mark I.
Babbage’s dream is now a reality!

Slide #47 CPS118 – Lesson #1 – Introduction and History

 1945
John Presper Ecker and John Mauchly build
the first electronic computer: the ENIAC.

Slide #48 CPS118 – Lesson #1 – Introduction and History

 The ENIAC weighed 30 tons!

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 It was placed in a sort of U of 6
meters wide by 12 meters long.

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Slide #51 CPS118 – Lesson #1 – Introduction and History
 Energy consumption: 200 KW!

The lights of the whole city of Philadelphia dimmed when it was turned on!
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Slide #53 CPS118 – Lesson #1 – Introduction and History
Slide #54 CPS118 – Lesson #1 – Introduction and History
 1945
The first bug! – found on Sep 9th at 15:45 by Grace Hopper,
then working on the Mark II computer at Harvard University.

She became the highest ranking

female Navy person of her time
(Rear Admiral) and a role model to
thousands of young women. The
bug now resides at the National
Museum of American History in
Washington DC.
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 1946
John von Neumann (along with Mauchly and
Eckert) proposes the architecture that uses a
central processing unit (CPU) and a separate
memory structure to hold both instructions and
data. This architecture is still the basis of today’s
computers.

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 1951
Under the direction of Howard Aiken, an IBM team builds one
of the first Von Neumann machines: the IBM SSEC.

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 1951
The EDVAC in the Moore School of Computer Science.

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 1951
UNIVAC built by Eckert and Mauchly: the first commercial
computer, it used magnetic tapes instead of punched cards.

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 1952
Article on use of UNIVAC
to forecast 1952
presidential election
results for CBS, from the
Philadelphia Evening
Bulletin, 15 October
1952.
Eckert at center, Walter
Cronkite at right.

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 1954
John Warner Backus with a
team from IBM, creates the first
high-level programming
language: FORTRAN. The first
working compiler appears in
1957.

John Backus made another,

critical contribution to early
computer science: During the
latter part of the 1950s Backus
served on the international
committees which developed
ALGOL 58 and the very
influential ALGOL 60, which
quickly became the de facto
worldwide standard for
publishing algorithms.
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 1958
John McCarthy invents the
Lisp programming language
at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. He
is also responsible for the
coining of the term
Artificial Intelligence.

Lisp (LISt Processing) rapidly

became the programming
language of choice for
artificial intelligence
applications.

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 1958
IBM 7090: First computer using transistors.

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 1958
Seymour Cray builds the first all transistor
computer: the CDC 1604.

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 1962
H. Ross Perot founds Electronic Data Systems
(EDS), which will be the world's largest data
processing company. It begins the automation of
business application like payrolls.

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 1962
Introduction of the first time-sharing operating
system: CTSS (Compatible Time-Sharing System)
was developed at MIT.

This advance permitted many users to share the

same computer simultaneously.

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 1964
IBM presents the first computer to use integrated
circuits: the IBM 360.

IBM 360 supported multiprogramming

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 1971
Nicklaus Wirth invents the
Pascal programming
language to facilitate the
learning of programming.

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 1971
Ken Thompson and his team
at Bell Labs invent a new
time-sharing operating system.

Brian Kernighan names it

UNICS, but will become later
known as UNIX.

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 1972
Dennis Ritchie invents
the C programming
language as a tool to
interface with the Unix
OS.

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 1972
Hewlett Packard released the first
scientific calculator: the HP 35. This
machine would wipe out the use of
what is left of slide rules.
Cost: more than $600!
It used the Reverse Polish Notation,
the basis of all stack machine math,
including our PCs and laptops.

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 1975

Seymour Cray
launches the first
supercomputer: the
CRAY-1.

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 1976
DEC launches the very popular mini-computer, the
VAX 11/780 following other very successful PDP
models like the PDP-11.

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 1977
Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs found the Apple
Computer Company.

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 Late 1970s
Cleve Moler, the chairman of the computer science
department at the University of New Mexico, started
developing MATLAB in the late 1970s.

MATLAB is a numerical computing

environment and fourth generation
programming language. Developed by The
MathWorks, MATLAB allows matrix
manipulation, plotting of functions and data,
implementation of algorithms, creation of
user interfaces, and interfacing with
programs in other languages.

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 1981
IBM launches the PC.

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 The 1980s
The early 1980s
were the first
years of the
golden age of
micro computing
Atari 800
TRS-80

Sinclair ZX-81 Commodore 64

Commodore PET
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 1982
Time Magazine eschewed
its Man of the Year Award
in favour of Machine of
the Year: The Computer.

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 1982
Sun Microsystems introduces its first workstation:
the Sun 100.

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 1984
Apple introduces the
Macintosh, the first
commercially
successful computer
using a graphical
interface.

Slide #80 CPS118 – Lesson #1 – Introduction and History

 1989
ANSI (American National
Standards Institute) publishes
the first standard for the C
programming language.

Tim Berners-Lee invents

hypertext, paving the way
to establish the World-
Wide-Web.

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 1989
Microsoft Corporation introduces the
Windows graphical interface.

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 1991
• Linus Torvalds was a
computer science
student at the
University of Helsinki
when he wrote the
operating system
Linux in 1991.

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 1994

Marc Andreesen, creates
the Web browser known
as Mosaic at the
University of Illinois.
Later co-founder of
Netscape Corporation.

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 1995
The Internet explodes
with a ton of new
services and
applications.

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 1996-1998
New services still!

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 1999
The concept of blogging is introduced
A blog (Web log) is a Web site, usually maintained
by an individual, with regular entries of
commentary, descriptions of events, or other
material such as graphics or video. Blogs have
since gained increasing notice and coverage for
their role in breaking, shaping, and spinning
news stories.

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 1999
Wi-Fi is introduced
We can now use
wireless networking,
also called WiFi or
802.11 networking,
to connect our
computer to the
internet.

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 2000

Microsoft releases Windows XP


Apple launches its iPod. A
modern version of a walkman
storing music in Mp3 format on
a small 5Gb internal hard disk.

No problems are
created by the
feared millennium
bug!

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 2002
Dr. Isaac Chuang, research staff
member at IBM's Almaden
Research Center (San Jose,
Calif.), holds a quantum computer
-- the glass tube contains
specially designed molecules.
Quantum computers promised to
solve some of the most difficult
mathematical problems
exponentially faster than a
conventional computer.
As of 2013, it is still in
experimental phase.

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 2003-2006
The Internet becomes social!

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 2006
Cloud storage is introduced. It will
slowly replace the need for
external hard drives.

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 2007
Smart phones revolutionize the
way we access the internet and
how we perceive computers.

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 2007
The Baltic state of
Estonia is the
world's first country
to vote in a national
parliamentary
election via the
Internet.

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 2010
Tablets like the iPad are
introduced, another way to access
the internet and do computing.

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 2014

Mobile
devices use
for web
traffic
overtake
desktop
computers
use for the
first time

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 2017
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates joins a
number of prominent tech gurus and
scientists in revealing his thoughts on
the potentially dangerous effects and
unintended consequences of artificial
intelligence on human civilization.
They felt that in the short-term
intelligent machines would benefit
mankind but they foresaw a future
where more advanced super-
intelligent machines could pose a
grave threat to human existence.

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 End of lesson

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