A Brief History of Computing

This book provides an introduction into the key topics in the history of computing in an easy-to-follow and concise manner. It covers significant areas and events in the field from the beginnings of computation 3000B.C. through to the present day. Features: Offers detailed information on major figures in computing, such as Boole, Babbage, Shannon , Turing and Von Neumann; Includes a history of programming languages, including syntax and semantics; presents a history of software engineering; Discusses the progress of artificial intelligence, with extension to some of the key disciplines in this field, such as philosophy, psychology, linguistics, neural networks and cybernetic; examines the history of the Internet revolution, World Wide Web and Dot Com Bubble; shows the evolution of a number of technology companies such as IBM, Motorola and Microsoft. Focusing on the fundamental areas in the computing field, this clearly written and broad-ranging text will catch the attention and greatly benefit computer science students. TOC:From the contents. Early Civilisations.- The Babylonians.- The Egyptians.- The Greeks.- The Romans.- Foundations.- Boole.- Babbage.- Formalism.- Turing.- Shannon.- Von Neumann.- Hermann Zuse.- Computer Programming Languages.- Object-oriented Languages.- Functional Programming Languages.- Logic Programming Languages.- Syntax and Semantics.- Software Engineering.- What is Software Engineering?- Early Software Engineering.- Software Engineering Mathematics.- Formal Methods.- Software Inspections and Testing.- Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems.- Descartes.- Philosophy and AI.- Cognitive Psychology.- Linguistics.- Cybernetics.- Logic and AI.- Computability, Incompleteness and Decidability.- Robots.- Neural Networks.- Expert Systems.- The Internet Revolution.- The ARPANET.- TCP/IP.- Birth of the Internet.- Birth of the World-Wide-Web.- Dot Com Companies.- E-Software Development.- E-Commerce Security.- Famous Technology Companies.- Microsoft.- Motorola.- Apple Computers.- Oracle.- Siemens.- HP.