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Kalamazoo
College Computer
Science Program Fall 2008
CS HISTORY PAPER
As we will learn during this quarter, the history of computer science is full of interesting characters and machines. Charles Babbage outlined the modern computer back in the 1800s, Alan Turing built a machine to help break German codes during World War II, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak brought the personal computer into the mainstream, and so on.
While each of these people or machines were significant to the field of computer science, they certainly did not work, or were not developed, in a vacuum. Each of them were influenced by their intellectual predecessors, and each affected those that came after them.
For this assignment, you will get into groups of 3 or 4 students. First, each member of the group is to choose a different decade or time period, and a significant person, machine, company, event, or development from that time period related to computing. Write a 1-2 page summary of your choice's most important contribution(s) to the history of computer science. You may want to include the impact of this contribution, given other significant events of the period.
Second, as a group, find connections between the choices each of the members made. Write at least a one-paragraph description of how each of your choices are connected to the others. (If you have three members in the group, you should have at least three paragraphs for this part; four members, at least six paragraphs.)
These connections can be as obvious (John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert worked together to build the ENIAC) or as obscure (Ada, Countess of Lovelace and Bill Gates both wrote programs without actually using a computer) as you wish. Your paragraph, though, should justify your connection.
When you are finished with each of your individual parts, and your group has made its connections, together you should have a 4-6 page paper. You should make sure there is an introductory paragraph, a transition between the different sections, and a concluding paragraph. You should turn in one paper for the group that includes each member's name and the section(s) they wrote.
IMPORTANT!!!: You should use citations in your documents to give credit for ideas drawn from other sources. This is true whether you are directly quoting the source or phrasing the idea in your own words. You may use the MLA or APA styles for parenthetical notes, or you may use one of the bracketed notation styles. No sentence or phrase from a source should appear verbatim in your document except in quotation marks or in an indented, single-spaced quotation block.
You will also need to include in your document a bibliography of all the sources you used. You should have at least three sources for your individual contributors, and they should not all be web sites. You will want to use the resources available to you in the library , and you may also search for resources on the World Wide Web. You may also want to consult with the Reference Librarians in the library if you are having difficulty finding sources.