Computer science and engineering: Laying claim to a new discipline: If engineering is to lay claim to the new computer field, it needs to widen its perspective and regard the computer as more than a tool

The early mathematical aspects of what is today called computer science originated from the use of computers as sophisticated desk calculators to solve numerical problems [photo], first using scaling of integers in “fixed point” notation and later automatically handling the decimal point through routines or hardware. In those days, the primary role of the electrical engineer was to design a machine that could carry out these computations with the greatest affordable speed, reliability, and cost-effectiveness. Shortly after, the same logical processes for symbol manipulation that enabled computers to do fast arithmetic were used to great advantage for handling, sorting, and processing alphanumeric information in the business world. This activity evolved into what has come to be known as data processing.