Description: A complete and accessible history of computer science, beginning with Charles Babbage in 1819.
Review Quotes: One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles, 2014.
"This is a fascinating reflection on a new academic discipline. It is an intellectual and cultural story woven round the history of automatic computation from 1819 to 1969. Center-stage is the stored-program paradigm, which emerged between 1945 and 1949. The theoretical abstractions created by Alan Turing in 1936 may have shaped the paradigm but Computer Science did not come into its own until after Turing's death, with the gradual accretion of sub-paradigms such as finite automata, systems architecture, declarative programming and artificial intelligence. Taking an even-handed view of developments on either side of the Atlantic, this book is a valuable counterpoint to shallower histories of the subject." -- Simon Lavington, Emeritus Professor, University of Essex"It Began with Babbage provides a wealth of background on the early history of computing - its people, ideas and systems - too much of which I should have known but didn't, or had somewhat askew. It both explores the relationships that drove this history and explains in an admirably accessible style the key ideas that enabled it." -- Paul Rosenbloom, author of On Computing; Professor, Department of Computer Science and Institute for Creative Technologies, University of Southern California"Dasgupta provides a comprehensive, enlightening history of the emergence of computer science as a new scientific paradigm... Highly recommended." --Choice