Computers and computation

The history of computer science goes back approximately 25 years. Yet most researchers and technicians who have entered the field within the past five years have little appreciation of the tremendously rapid development of the computer: the 25 years of computer science, say Fenichel and Weizenbaum, are equivalent to many times that number in other fields. For various reasons, computer science has now reached a point of relative stasis, from which we may gain some perspective on its history and significance. In this offering of 25 articles from Scientific American, with introductions and…