Storia dell'Informatica (History of Informatics) -- 2006/07


Last modified: 8 - January - 2007


Leonardo da Vinci's Adding Machine (???)

Prerequisites

Aims

This course deals with the history of computation, computers and computer science from the distant "roots" (e.g. ancient calculating techniques and devices) up to our days.
Given the breadth of the topic, we will only able to outline the whole development and concentrate on some chosen "milestones".
We will try to pay attention not only to the technological (hardware and software) issues but also to the non-technological ones.

 

Summary of Contents (revised at the end of the lectures)

The order in which the single topics are listed and the way in which they are grouped need not correspond to the way they have been covered in the lectures.

  1. Computing before computers: number systems, abaci and other calculating "aids".
  2. Computing before computers: arithmetical machines.
  3. Computing before computers: when computers were people, difference machines.
  4. Babbage's Analitycal Engine.
  5. Mathematicians and the origin of computing: from Leibnitz to von Neumann.
  6. Mechanical and electromechanical calculators.
  7. The very first computers: ABC, ENIAC, ...
  8. The first stored-program computers: EDVAC, the IAS machine, EDSAC,...
  9. Early development: computers as scientific calculators and as business machines.
  10. The first four "computer generations".
  11. Real time, time sharing, minicomputers.
  12. The development of programming languages and operating systems.
  13. Software contractors and sw products.
  14. The Italian scene: "ELEA: storia di una sfida industriale" (seminar by Franco Filippazzi).
  15. The Italian scene: "Programma 101, il primo personal computer" (seminar by Pierpaolo Perotto).

 

Textbooks - References

  1. Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray
    Computer: A History of the Information Machine, 2nd ed.
    Westview Press, 2004.
  2. Michael R. Williams
    A History of Computing Technology, 2nd Edition
    Wiley-IEEE Computer Society Press, 1997.
  3. Computing Before Computers - a book on the history of computing, edited by W. Aspray;
    pdf version
  4. Course notes: see directories Appunti_XXX at the address http://informatica.aulaweb.unige.it/
    In the menu on the left, choose: Anno Accademico 2006/2007
    then, in the central menu, choose: Specialistica
    and, finally, choose: Storia dell'Informatica (2006/07)
  5. ELEA: storia di una sfida industriale
  6. Links, books, papers, ....

 

Assessment - exam

For the present academic year, the exam will consists in


Comments to gerardo costa