Objectives and outcomes
Students acquire knowledge about the beginnings of computing and its development stages. They learn about the important computing terms. Upon completion of the course, students can recognise the basic elements, principles and moments in the evolution of computing within the framework of the history of science and society. Moreover, they will be able to recognise patents, technological advances and inventors in the field of computing.
Lectures
History of numbers. Pre-computer age and computational techniques. Automatic computing in the nineteenth century. Information technology until 1945. Computers in the Second World War. Computers and the Cold War. Computers in science. Programming languages and software. Mainframes. Microcomputers. Timesharing and Unix. Computing in the Eastern Bloc. From ARPANET to the Internet. Apple, IBM and Microsoft. The history of Windows, UNIX and Linux operating systems. The development of the Internet and the World Wide Web.