In late 1991, Wes Graham asked me to write a history of Computer Science at Waterloo to celebrate the 25th anniversary, the celebrations to be held in July, 1992. Although I was neither a member of the CS department nor intimately involved in computer science I listened to his arguments of unbiassed writing and you've been around forever and you're the only person stupid enough to agree ... and I agreed (to the last, if not the first).

I decided to begin with a Prologue that would sketch the history of computers, from Babbage to Turing. That was a mistake; it meant weeks in the library researching this era

What follows is that prologue (including my original, rather crude cartoons created with an ancient program called Macpaint).

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