Book written by Prof E Dunne detailing the History of the Computer Science Department at the University of Liverpool.

Detailed Description

Preface

Towards the end of 2019, in late October to be precise, I put together a summary of how the Department of Computer Science at The University of Liverpool had grown and reached its then state following establishment in 1982. Part of the motivation supporting this exercise was a growing awareness that the contributions and achievements of those associated with the department from its foundation were in danger of being forgotten: until the mid-1990s there was no World Wide Web repository; minutes and meeting records were in hard-copy typed form and not available digitally; the names of those who had endowed prizes honouring student achievement and awarded at graduation celebrations were, frequently, a cause of bewilderment. In 2019, when the earlier version of this document was prepared, the number of academic, technical, and administrative support staff surviving from the earliest days of the department were, already, a tiny fraction of the total number of those working here. Five years on, only myself (the longest serving academic member of staff) and my colleague Phil Jimmieson (the longest serving member of the Department, who was providing technical support when I arrived in August 1985) are left. When, at some stage within the next two to three years, both of us have retired, there will be no one around having first-hand experience of how things were in the first ten years to contrast with the present-day environment.