ECS 98: History of Computer Science
Overview
Lower division seminar exploring the history and development of computer science as a field.
I designed and taught my second course, a 1-unit lower division seminar in Spring 2015, on the History of Computer Science. I want to thank Sean Davis for serving as my instructor of record, as well as Nina Amenta, Phillip Rogaway, Matthew Farrens, Norm Matloff, Vladimir Filkov, Patrice Koehl and Lori Avellar for making the seminar possible.
The two main books I used were Computer: A History of the Information Machine and The Universal Computer: The Road from Leibniz to Turing. I also enjoyed reading Logicomix: An epic search for truth while searching for course material.
Eleven of 15 students submitted course evaluations, and nine submitted the extended course evaluation. You can read their responses. The evaluations were handwritten, so I digitized the students’ responses. Some handwriting was illegible, so some information was lost.