Computer Science Handbook Allen B Tucker

The field of computer science has undergone a dramatic evolution in its short 70-year life. As the field has matured, new areas of research and applications have emerged and joined with classical discoveries in a continuous cycle of revitalization and growth. In the 1930s, fundamental mathematical principles of computing were developed by Turing and Church. Early computers implemented by von Neumann, Wilkes, Eckert, Atanasoff, and others in the 1940s led to the birth of scientific and commercial computing in the 1950s, and to mathematical programming languages like Fortran, commercial languages like COBOL, and artificial-intelligence languages like LISP. In the 1960s the rapid development and consolidation of the subjects of algorithms, data structures, databases, and operating systems formed the core of what we now call traditional computer science; the 1970s saw the emergence of software engineering, structured programming, and object-oriented programming. The emergence of personal computing and networks in the 1980s set the stage for dramatic advances in computer graphics, software technology, and parallelism. The 1990s saw the worldwide emergence of the Internet, both as a medium for academic and scientific exchange and as a vehicle for international commerce and communication.