Early Education
In 1946, the first "computer science" ("computing" to be more precise, since the term "computer science" was coined afterwards) lectures took place "at the University of Pennsylvania´s Moore School of Electrical Engineering" (Computer History Museum, 1946 section). It is unknown what was taught in the lectures, but we could assume the contents were related to digital computer designs since they were under electrical engineering department. It was at a time when new models rapidly emerged, and "the lecturers were early computer designers" (Computer History Museum, 1946 section).
Computer science experienced fast growth in academia in 1960s. In 1962, Purdue University formed a computer science department, which was the first CS department worldwide (Shallit, 1995, 1960s section). George Forsythe, regarded as a founding figure of computer science, founded the CS department in Stanford in 1965 (Herriot et al). Also in 1965, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Wisconsin, and the Washington University started awarding doctorate degrees in computer science (London). The programming language BASIC (acronym of "Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code") was developed in 1964 to help students without strong math background to use computers (Dartmouth College Computation Center, 1964).
We can now look at what Poly was doing at that same period. For a bit of context, Poly's full name was the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (PIB), which then changed to the Polytechnic Institute of New York (PINY) after merging with New York University School of Engineering and Science in 1973. It was merged with NYU again in 2008 and changed its name to Tandon School of Engineering in 2015.
There was no computer science department or degree of any level as shown in 1966-67 course catalog. In fact, there weren't any until the 1973 merger. However, there were courses related to computer science, assigned under electrical engineering, mathematics, civil engineering, and system engineering.
The introduction of EE department. They listed "computer science" as one of the concentrations of study and gave a brief definition of it. The "design, construction and utilization of digital computers" were three aspects that connected with each other. "Design" focused on computer architecture, as how the founding figures like Alan Turing or John von Neumann proposed new models for computing. "Construction" focused on hardware components, as the way Bell Lab and its successors built the early models. Finally, "utilization" means how to use computers to achieve certain goals, be it math calculation or system automation, by writing programs. It is worth noting that the "construction" aspect has been strip out from modern computer science and moved into the new major computer engineering.
The list of concentration areas for master's students in electrical engineering, including "computer design and application."
Courses under the CS concentration. The descriptions indicates that design, construction, and utilization were all included in the curriculum, where "switching and automata theory" focused on design, "digital computers" focused on hardware, and "computer languages" focused on usage. There also was a cross-disciplinary course "recursive functions and effective computability" which fell under EE and mathematics at the same time. It was no surprise as many engineering programs at Poly had high-level math courses in their curriculum.
Course requirements for undergraduate electrical engineering students. The only course related to computer science is EE 301 "intro to computers", which shows that CS education at Poly was mainly restricted at the graduate level. A side note on the source: freshmen courses were not listed because they were basically the same for all majors.
Freshmen courses for all majors, including intro-level math, physics, and chemistry, humanities and social sciences, and physical education. This tradition was preserved to some extent, but the number of commonly required courses has decreased, leaving the second semester open for major specific courses. It is also interesting to observe the huge course load compared to the typical 4-5 courses now. Courses with 2-3 credits were common in 1960s and the credits required for each semester was about 18, resulting in six or more courses per semester.
EE 301: Introduction to Computers. From the description we could assume it was like the current CS intro course (CS-UY 1114), except for the additional computer architecture part.
The two similar courses of EE 301: MA 356 and CE 212. EE 301 warned that it was not open for students who already took one of the latter courses. Such restrictions are generally due to the similarity of course contents, where the two or more courses teach the same material with some characteristics of the major. In this case, MA 356 focused on numerical analysis while CE 212 dealt with engineering problems. Note that the math course was not required for math majors, therefore this introductory computer science course was rather niche back then. By contrast, CS-UY 1114 is a basic requirement for all majors at Tandon.
Electrical engineering, math, and civil engineering were somewhat expected to provide computer science courses when there was no CS major, but there was yet another department called system science that offered CS courses. In fact, system science had a series of courses with the name "computer science" which formed a more thorough curriculum than EE. They were comparable to the CS concentration in the EE graduate program, but the system science started at undergraduate level.
Descriptions of the four computer science courses. The "SE" tag stood for system engineering, which meant system science at an applied level. Computer Science III and IV introduced computer graphic and time-sharing system respectively, which were both relatively new technology in the 60s.
We might start thinking whether system science / system engineering is the true precursor of computer science at Poly, given the strong presence of CS courses in the undergraduate curriculum and the fact that it no longer exists now. We will explore this mysterious field of study in the next chapter.