A half century of computing

Layne T. Watson

Abstract

The advances in engineering, science, and technology over the past half century have been amazing, but none match the orders of magnitude improvement in computing. The technical achievements are archived in the research literature, but rarely are personal stories, anecdotes, historical perspectives, subjective opinions derived from personal experience, or value judgements recorded for posterity. The goal of this special issue is to record such things from individuals with a half century or more of experience in computing. An attempt was made to cover as many research areas and geographic regions as possible.