History of the development of computer science as a science. History of the development of computer science in Russia

The history of computer science as a science began in the second half of the 20th century. This was due to the advent and spread of computers and the beginning of the computer revolution. The advent of computers in the 40-50s created the necessary hardware support for computer science, that is, a favorable environment for its development as a science.

However, despite its short history, computer science has a long history associated with the peculiarities of accumulation and processing of information at different stages of the development of human society. Thus, the entire history of computer science can be divided into two large stages: prehistory and history itself.

Background of computer science

The prehistory of computer science begins with the advent social society. There are a number of stages in prehistory. Each of them is characterized by a sharp increase in the capabilities of storing, transmitting and processing information compared to the previous one.

The first stage is the mastery by a person of developed oral speeches. Among ancient people, articulate speech and the language they spoke began to play the role of a means of storing and transmitting information.

At the second stage there appeared writing. Compared to the previous stage, the ability to store information has sharply increased. Man got some kind of artificial external memory. Organization postal services allowed the use of writing as a means of transmitting information, and not just storing it.

The emergence of writing was a necessary condition for the beginning of the development of sciences. The emergence of the concept " natural number"All peoples who possessed writing knew the concept of number and used one or another number system.

Third stage – typography. It can be called the first information technology. Reproduction of information has now been put on stream. Compared to the previous one, at this stage the possibility of storing information did not increase so much (although there was a gain here: a written source is often a single copy, a printed book is a whole circulation of copies, and therefore there is a low probability of losing information during storage), how much the availability of information for all people has increased, as well as the accuracy of its reproduction, that is, reliability.

The fourth and final stage in the prehistory of computer science is associated with the successes of the exact sciences (primarily mathematics and physics) and the beginning scientific and technological revolution. This stage is characterized by the emergence of such powerful means of communication as radio, telephone and telegraph, and later television. New opportunities for obtaining and storing information have emerged - photography and cinema. It is very important to add to them the development of methods for recording information on magnetic media(magnetic tapes, disks).

History of computer science

It is customary to associate the beginning of the history of computer science as a science with the development of the first computers. There are several reasons for this connection.

Firstly, the term “computer science” itself appeared thanks to the development computer technology, and at first computer science was understood as the science of automating calculations, because the first computers were mostly used to carry out numerical calculations.

Secondly, the separation of computer science into a separate science was facilitated by such an important property of modern computing technology as a unified form of representation of processed and stored information. All information, regardless of its type, is stored and processed on a computer in binary form.

It so happened that the computer in one system combined the storage and processing of numerical, text (character) and audiovisual (sound, image) information. This universality was the initiating role of computer technology in the emergence and development of a new science.

Today, informatics and computer science are complex scientific and technical disciplines. They combine a number of areas, such as information theory, cybernetics, programming, modeling, Hardware and much more.

Mathematics, physics, astronomy and other fundamental sciences have their roots in ancient times. Computer science is a very young science. The beginning of computer science is considered to be 1948, the year of publication of Norbert Wiener’s book “Cybernetics, or control and communication in animals and machines.” Around the same time, the first electronic digital computers were created.

So, the age of computer science is a little over 50 years. Nevertheless, this science has its own unique, extremely interesting history.

The history of computer science in our country (first in the Soviet Union and then in Russia) is full of dramatic events and sharp changes in priorities. This is felt even in the terminology. The term “computer science” to denote a set of scientific fields closely related to the advent of computers and their rapid entry into the sphere determined by people’s life activities is relatively new in our country. He received “citizenship rights” in the early 80s, and before that, according to the definition given in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, computer science was considered as “a discipline that studies the structure and general properties of scientific information, as well as the patterns of its creation, transformation, transmission and use in various spheres of human activity."

Speaking about the history of computer science in the former USSR and present-day Russia, in essence, it is necessary to outline the history of domestic cybernetics and partly applied mathematics and computer technology.

Nowadays there is an increased interest in the history of science all over the world. This is natural, since the 20th century was full of the most important scientific discoveries, unprecedented technical progress, and the creativity of outstanding scientists and engineers. The development of science is determined by a few key ideas developed by specific individuals and schools.

Throughout the half-century history of computer science, certain directions have repeatedly arisen and disappeared. At present, its structure appears to have been determined.

The history of computer science is associated with a gradual expansion of its area of ​​interest. The possibility of expansion was dictated by the development of computers and the accumulation of models and methods of their application in solving problems of various types

History milestones:

In 1950, the first permanent seminar on programming began at the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science of the USSR Academy of Sciences, led by L. A. Lyusternik.

In 1952, the Department of Computational Mathematics was created at Moscow State University (the department was headed by S. L. Sobolev), for whose students and graduate students in the 1952-53 academic year A. A. Lyapunov first taught the course “Principles of Programming.”

In 1953, a programming department was created in the Department of Applied Mathematics of the Mathematical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences, headed by A. A. Lyapunov. In the same year, the first book on programming, accessible to everyone interested in this area, appeared.

In 1955 it was created Computer center Moscow State University, specializing in the development and application of computational methods for solving complex scientific and applied problems.

By the mid-50s, leading specialists in the field of computer technology had a clear idea of ​​the ways of development of domestic computer science. An example is an article by V. M. Glushkov, who then worked in the laboratory of computer technology at the Institute of Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR in Kyiv. In mid-1957, the author of the article clearly defines the directions of strategic research in the field of computer science. According to V. M. Glushkov, the basis for the progress of the development of computers should be the theory of their operation, the development of methods for automating the design of computers and the development of methods for automating programming.

The training of specialists in computational mathematics began at Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev universities, and in a number of technical universities educational institutions courses in computer technology appeared, and then departments of computer technology or computers began to open.

At the end of 1958 A.I. Berg began a series of consultations with leading experts in the field of computer science with the goal of creating an institute of cybernetics with the USSR. Unfortunately, insurmountable disagreements arose among the participants in the consultations, which prevented the creation of the institute.

At the end of 1961, Berg had the idea to start with something simpler than organizing an academic institute. He decides to create a Scientific Council under the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which would coordinate research on cybernetics in the USSR and at the same time conduct scientific research, which would make it possible to subsequently create the Institute of Cybernetics of the USSR Academy of Sciences on the basis of the Council.

At the end of the same 1961, the Scientific Council on the complex problem of “Cybernetics” was created in Kyiv under the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. This Council was headed by V.M. Glushkov. In 1962, he became the director of the organization he organized with the active support of A.I. Berg Institute of Cybernetics of the Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences, which became the center for the development of computer science in Ukraine.

A little before the creation of this institute, A. I. Berg managed to obtain consent from the leadership of the Georgian Academy of Sciences to open the Institute of Cybernetics of the Academy of Sciences of the Georgian SSR in Tbilisi (1960). The director of this institute was V.V. Chavchanidze.

Then institutes of the same profile were created in other republics of the USSR: Institute of Cybernetics of the Academy of Sciences of the ESSR (1960) in Tallinn, Institute of Cybernetics of the Academy of Sciences of the AzSSR (1965) in Baku, Institute of Technical Cybernetics in Minsk (1965), Institute of Cybernetics of the Academy of Sciences of the Uzbek SSR in Tashkent ( 1966).

In other republics, branches, departments and laboratories of a cybernetic profile arose in the structure of previously existing academic institutes (in Moldova it was the Institute of Mathematics, in Kyrgyzstan - the Institute of Automation, in Latvia - the Institute of Electronics and Computer Engineering).

The next twenty years saw the flourishing of cybernetic research in our country. All its directions were actively developing. In many of them, the results of Soviet specialists were either at the world level or ahead of it.

All of the listed achievements of domestic computer science in the 60-70s took place against the backdrop of high activity of the scientific community in our country. Seminars and scientific schools, numerous and, as a rule, crowded conferences, symposiums and meetings were held, the flow of literature published in the field of cybernetics increased, new institutes and divisions of a cybernetic profile arose in previously existing organizations.

Since the beginning of the 70s, a new scientific direction has been rapidly developing - artificial intelligence. At first, his interests covered only issues related to the modeling of intellectual activity, but gradually almost all areas of computer science were drawn into the field of artificial intelligence applications. Even such traditional areas of computer science as system Programming or computational models, over time began to be enriched with ideas generated in the course of work in the field of artificial intelligence (the use of logical methods for proving the correctness of programs or providing an interface on a professional natural language with packages application programs- just two examples of such enrichment).

Since the 80s, it can be considered that problem solving technology, based on the idea of ​​​​using knowledge about the subject area where the problem arose, and knowledge about how similar problems are solved, is characteristic of work on intelligent systems, has become the main paradigm for modern computer science

Computer science has already broken away from its ancestor cybernetics and has become an independent scientific discipline. Characterizing computer science of the 80s, A.P. Ershov writes: “...this term is again, for the third time, introduced into the Russian language in a new and much broader meaning - as the name of a fundamental natural science that studies the processes of transmission and processing of information” and further on the same page computer science is defined as "the science of information models, reflecting the fundamental philosophical concept of “information”.

The term "computer science" became widespread in the 80s, and the term "cybernetics" gradually disappeared from circulation, remaining only in the names of those institutions that arose during the era of the "cybernetic boom" of the late 50s - early 60s. The term “cybernetics” is no longer used in the names of new organizations.

Computer science has now so deeply permeated all spheres of human life that no review of its current state can count on any completeness; it will always remain fragmentary and will reflect the subjective biases of the compiler.

In this work, an attempt is made to restore the path that domestic computer science has traveled over the half century that separates the present time from the beginning of the era of computers, without which people can no longer imagine their lives.

Computer science as the unity of science and technology

Computer science is by no means just a “pure science”. It certainly has a scientific core, but important feature computer science - the broadest applications covering almost all types of human activity: production, management, science, education, design development, trade, financial sector, medicine, forensics, security environment etc. And, perhaps, the most important of them is the improvement of social management on the basis of new information technologies.

As a science, computer science studies the general patterns inherent in information processes(in the very in a broad sense this concept). When new media, communication channels, coding techniques, visual display of information and much more are developed, the specific nature of this information is almost irrelevant. For a database management system (DBMS) developer, it is important general principles organization and efficiency of data retrieval, and not what specific data will then be entered into the database by numerous users. These general patterns are the subject of computer science as a science.

The object of computer science applications is a wide variety of sciences and fields practical activities, for whom it has become a continuous source of the most modern technologies often called “new information technologies” (NIT). Diverse information technologies operating in different types human activities (production process management, design, financial transactions, education, etc.), having common features, at the same time differ significantly from each other.

Let's list the most impressive implementations of information technologies, using abbreviations that have become traditional.

ACS - automated control systems - a complex of technical and software, which, in interaction with a person, organize the management of objects in production or the public sphere. For example, in education, ACS-VUZ systems are used.

APCS - automated process control systems. For example, such a system controls the operation of a computer numerical control (CNC) machine, the process of launching a spacecraft, etc.

ASNI - automated system scientific research - a software and hardware complex in which scientific instruments are interfaced with a computer, measurement data is automatically entered into it, and the computer processes this data and presents it in the most convenient form for the researcher.

AOS is an automated training system. There are systems to help students learn new material, carrying out knowledge control, helping teachers prepare educational materials, etc.

A CAD system for computer-aided design is a software and hardware complex that, in interaction with a person (designer, design engineer, architect, etc.), allows you to design mechanisms, buildings, components of complex units, etc. as efficiently as possible.

Let us also mention diagnostic systems in medicine, systems for organizing ticket sales, systems for conducting accounting and financial activities, systems for supporting editorial and publishing activities - the range of application of information technologies is extremely wide.

With the development of computer science, the question arises about its relationship and differentiation with cybernetics. This requires clarification of the subject of cybernetics and a more strict interpretation of it. Computer science and cybernetics have much in common, based on the concept of control, but they also have objective differences. One of the approaches to distinguishing computer science and cybernetics is to classify the research of information technologies in the field of computer science not in any cybernetic systems (biological, technical, etc.), but only in social systems. While cybernetics retains the study of the general laws of the movement of information in arbitrary systems, computer science, based on this theoretical foundation, studies specific ways and techniques for processing, transmitting, and using information. However, to many modern scientists such a division seems artificial, and they simply consider cybernetics to be one of the components of computer science.

history computer science information

This article will examine the history of computer science as a science; we will also understand what it does and its main directions.

Digital Age

The modern world is very difficult to imagine without information and digital technologies. All of them make life much easier; thanks to them, humanity has made a number of significant breakthroughs in science and industry. Let us consider in more detail the disciplines of computer science and the history of its formation as a science.

Definition

Computer science is a science that studies methods of collecting, processing, storing, transmitting and analyzing information using various computer and digital technologies, as well as studying the possibilities of their application.

It includes disciplines that relate to the processing and calculation of information using various types of computers and networks. Moreover, both abstract ones, such as the analysis of algorithms, and concrete ones, for example, the development of new data compression methods, information exchange protocols and programming languages.

As you can see, computer science is a science that is distinguished by its breadth of research topics and directions. As an example, we can cite the following questions and tasks: what is real and what is impossible to implement in programs (artificial intelligence, self-learning computers, etc.), how to solve various kinds of specific information problems as efficiently as possible (the so-called theory of computational complexity), in what how information should be stored and retrieved, how people should interact with programs most effectively (questions user interface, new programming languages, etc.).

Now we will briefly consider the development of computer science as a science, starting from its origins.

Story

Computer science is a young science that emerged gradually and received its strongest development in the second half of the 20th century. It is also very important in our time, when almost the entire world is dependent on computer and other electronic computing technologies.

It all started in the middle of the 19th century, when various scientists created mechanical calculators and “analytical engines.” In 1834, Charles Babbage began developing a programmable calculator, and, by the way, it was he who subsequently formulated many of the basic features and principles of the modern computer. It was also he who proposed the use of punched cards, which were then in use until the end of the 80s of the 20th century.

In 1843, Ada Lovelace created an algorithm to calculate Bernoulli numbers, and this is considered the first computer program in history.

Around 1885, Herman Hollerith created a tabulator, a device for reading data from punched cards. And in 1937, almost a hundred years after Babbage's ideas and dreams, IBM created the first programmable calculator.

In the early 1950s, it became clear to everyone that the computer could be used in various fields of science and industry, and not just as a tool for mathematical calculations. And that computer science, which was just emerging then, is the science that holds the future. And a little later it received the status of official science.

Now let's briefly look at its structure.

Structure of computer science

The structure of computer science is multifaceted. As a discipline, it covers a wide range of topics. Starting from theoretical research of various kinds of algorithms and ending with practical implementation individual programs or the creation of computing and digital devices.

Computer science is the science that studies...

On this moment There are several main directions, which, in turn, are divided into many branches. Let's look at the most basic ones:

1. Theoretical computer science. Her tasks include the study of both the classical theory of algorithms and a number of important topics that are related to the more abstract aspects of mathematical calculations.
2. AppliedInformatics. This is a science, or rather, one of its sections, which is aimed at identifying certain concepts in the field of computer science that can be used as methods for solving some standard problems, for example, building algorithms, storing and managing information using data structures . Besides, applied computer science used in a number of industrial, everyday or scientific fields: bioinformatics, electronic linguistics and others.
3. Natural computer science. This is a direction that studies the processes of various information processing in nature, be it the human brain or human society. Its foundations are built on the classical theories of evolution, morphogenesis and others. In addition to them, scientific areas such as DNA research, brain activity, the theory of group behavior, etc. are used.

As you can see, computer science is a science that studies a number of very important theoretical issues, for example, the creation of artificial intelligence or the development of solutions for some mathematical problems.

Short story development of computer science.

Lecture 1 History of the development of computer science

Literature

1. Information systems and technologies in economics and management: Textbook, ed. V.V. Trofimova. - Moscow Higher educationʼʼ 2007ᴦ.

2. Management information technologies: Tutorial for universities, ed. G.A. Titarenko. - 2nd ed., add. - M.: UNITY-DANA, 2003.

3. Karminsky A.M., Nesterov P.V. Business informatization. - M.: Finance and Statistics, 1997.

4. Kleptsov M.Ya. Organ information systems government controlled. - M.: RAGS, 1996.

5. Automated information technologies in economics: Textbook Chernikov B.V. - M. Publishing House Forum 2008.

Computer science as a science began to develop from the middle of our century, which is associated with the advent of computers and the beginning of the computer revolution.

The advent of computers in the 50s provided computer science with the hardware support it needed. The entire history of computer science is usually divided into two large stages: prehistory and history.

The prehistory of computer science is as ancient as the history of the development of human society. In prehistory, a number of stages are distinguished (very approximately). Each of these stages is characterized by a sharp increase in the capabilities of storing, transmitting and processing information compared to the previous one.

The initial stage of prehistory is the acquisition by man of developed oral speech. Articulate speech and language have become a specific social means of storing and transmitting information.

The second stage is the emergence of writing. First of all, the capabilities for storing information have increased sharply (compared to the previous stage). The person received artificial external memory. The organization of postal services made it possible to use writing as a means of transmitting information. At the same time, the emergence of writing was a necessary condition for the beginning of the development of sciences (remember Ancient Greece, for example). The emergence of the concept is apparently associated with this same stage natural number. All peoples who possessed writing knew the concept of number and used some kind of number system.

The third stage is book printing. Printing can easily be called the first information technology. Reproduction of information was put on stream, on an industrial basis. Compared to previous this stage not so much increased storage capabilities (although there was a gain here too: a written source - often a single copy, a printed book - a whole circulation of copies, and therefore a low probability of losing information during storage (remember "The Tale of Igor's Campaign")), but increased accessibility of information and accuracy of its reproduction.

The fourth and final stage of prehistory is associated with the successes of the exact sciences (primarily mathematics and physics) and the scientific and technological revolution beginning at that time. This stage is characterized by the emergence of such powerful means of communication as radio, telephone and telegraph, to which television was added at the end of the stage. In addition to communications, new opportunities for receiving and storing information have appeared - photography and cinema. It is also very important to add to them the development of methods for recording information on magnetic media (magnetic tapes, disks).

A brief history of the development of computer science. - concept and types. Classification and features of the category "Brief history of the development of computer science." 2017, 2018.

The history of the development of computer science is the history of mathematics and algebraic calculations. There are a number of stages in the history of its development. This is, first of all, a pre-mechanical stage, which includes the general development of speech in humans, the creation of writing as a way of recording and transmitting information in human communities.

Pre-mechanical period

The history of the development of computer science at this stage includes the emergence

Ideas about numbers and calculations. Thus, initially in the ancient societies of Sumer and Akkad, later in China, India, Egypt, and finally in the ancient states of the Mediterranean, more and more advanced methods of counting, recording numbers, and astronomical calculations appeared. In the Czech Republic, archaeologists discovered the so-called “Vestonice bone,” which is a bone with notches used for counting. According to scientists, this artifact is about thirty thousand years old. In China, more than five thousand years ago, bone abacus, known to everyone today, was invented to facilitate counting operations. In ancient civilization, a fairly advanced system of calculations was created, known today as the Roman one. All this is also the history of the development of computer science, since it has become the foundation of human knowledge and for the most modern computing systems.

Mechanical period

The history of the development of information technology connects the next stage with attempts to mechanize the computing process. They appear in the era of humanism and the Renaissance. In 1642, the famous physicist Blaise Pascal created the world's first device that mechanically performed subtraction and addition operations. Three decades later, Gottfried Leibniz, based on Pascal's machine, created an adding machine that could already perform multiplication and division. This mechanism, by the way, was used until the mid-twentieth century. Similar and increasingly advanced mechanisms were gradually created.

Electronic computing period

The history of the development of computer science experienced a new surge already at the end of the nineteenth - beginning of the twentieth century, against the backdrop of general development technologies. In 1930, Alan Turing of the University of Cambridge literally created the prototype of the modern computer, publishing his vision of such a machine in the article “On Computable Numbers.” And thirteen years later, IBM employee Howard Aiken managed to create the first electronic computer that could cope with two twenty-three-digit numbers in four seconds. In 1945, mathematician John von Neumann proposed his architectural vision of what the components of a computer should consist of: an arithmetic-logical unit, a storage device, a control device, external devices for sending and receiving information to the computer from the outside world. This principle was accepted, and it is the one that is used to this day without much change. Later, computers developed intensively through evolution. Thus, at the turn of the 1950s and 60s, computers using transistors appeared instead of tube machines, and in the mid-1960s, computers using small integrated circuits appeared. Already in the early 1970s they were replaced by large integrated circuits, which are still used today.

In 1978, computer science was recognized as an official science that studies areas related to the creation, implementation and processing of information through computer technology and them software. Nowadays, the science that we call computer science has become widely known in the Western world as “computer science.” Today the history of development information systems is going through perhaps its most intense phase. Literally every year gives us fundamentally new technologies. And one can be immensely surprised at how significantly progress has stepped forward today, looking at least at the past decade.