Call Number: OH 15
Interviewee: Fein, Louis
Interviewer: Pamela McCorduck
Repository: Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
Description: Transcript, 18 pp.
Abstract: Fein discusses his involvement in establishing computer science as an academic discipline. In 1955 he joined Stanford Research Institute (SRI) as a computer consultant and was asked by Frederick Terman and Albert Bowker to design a computation curriculum. He describes the difficulty in establishing computer science's autonomy from engineering programs. Fein also describes his contacts with the University of California - Berkeley, the University of North Carolina, Purdue, and other institutions. He recalls his presentation on computer science departments at the 1962 Munich meeting of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), and how his plans were accepted at many academic institutions throughout the U.S. and Europe. Fein concludes with his views on the future of computer science, which entail a name change to "synnoetics" and a corresponding conceptual redirection to the interaction among intelligent beings, including humans and computers.
Subject(s):
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. -- Dept. of Computer Science ; University of California, Berkeley. -- Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences ; Terman, Frederick Emmons, 1900- ; Stanford Research Institute ; Purdue University. -- Dept. of Computer Science ; International Federation for Information Processing ; Fein, Louis ; Electronic data processing consultants ; Curriculum planning ; Computer science -- Study and teaching (Higher) ; Computer industry -- Societies, etc. ; Bowker, Albert Hosmer, 1919-
Citation: Louis Fein, OH 15. Oral history interview by Pamela McCorduck, 9 May 1984, Palo Alto, California. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
Copyright: Copyright to this oral history is held by the Charles Babbage Institute. Distribution in any format of the transcript in its entirety is prohibited. Permission to quote from the transcript under the fair use provision of the copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code) is granted provided that this source is cited.
Transcript: Link to transcript