Reflections on the History of
Computer Engineering & Computer Science at UCLA

Gerald Estrin, Professor Emeritus

Starting in the late 1940s, UCLA made pioneering contributions to the information revolution. A creative environment nurtured research and education in computer egineering and computer science. Some highlights of the period up to formal establishment of the UCLA Computer Science Department in 1968 follow:

* 1947 -- The Institute for Numerical Analysis was set up on the UCLA campus under sponsorship of the National Bureau of Standards with funding from the Office of Naval Research. The primary function of INA was "to conduct research and training in the types of mathematics pertinent to the efficient exploitation and further development of high-speed automatic digital computing machinery". INA attracted a stream of internationally recognized applied mathematicians. Harry Huskey completed the SWAC(Standards Western Automatic Computer) development project in 1950 and it became one of the very few places where modern numerical experiments could be conducted. The SWAC provided a testing ground for computer engineers, programmers and applied mathematicians. George Forsythe was a key member of INA who later joined the Stanford faculty and became a leader of the movement to establish computer science programs in the USA. C.B.Tompkins headed INA in the mid-1950s and organized support to serve the computational needs of the entire campus, replacing SWAC by large IBM computer systems.

* 1948 -- Dean L. M. K. Boelter came to UCLA from Berkeley to head the College of Engineering. Boelter had an educational mission to break down the conventional specialization categories of departments in engineering and to design unified engineering curricula leading to BS, MS and PhD Degrees in Engineering. Due to the universality of simulation tools in engineering, Professor Thomas A. Rogers was able to get support for analog computation. Two large analog computers, a mechanical differential analyzer and a network analyzer were obtained from General Electric One of the first electronic analog computers, EASE, was designed and built at UCLA. Professor Walter Karplus joined the UCLA faculty in 1955 and played a key role in developing the field of scientifiic computing and numerical methods for solution of differential equations in engineering. Tom Rogers led computer lab and course development and created an early numerically controlled machine tool laboratory.

* 1950 -- At RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, a project to build a von Neumann type machine was closely tracking the ongoing development at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton (von Neumann often came west to consult at RAND and, in fact, his plan to relocate to UCLA was aborted by his death in February 1957). Before the Princeton machine was finished, one of the original members of the IAS engineering team, Willis Ware, left to head the RAND computer project. With Montgomery Phister, Ware began to offer evening introductory courses in digital computer design at UCLA.

* 1956 -- Dean Boelter of the College of Engineering and Prof. C. B. Tompkins, Director of the Institute for Numerical Analysis, joined forces to recruit Gerald Estrin to the UCLA engineering faculty from the von Neumann Electronic Computer Project at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton.The goal was to build a computer engineering research program and to initiate a full time academic program to spark a new computer initiative. In 1958, Estrin formed the Digital Research Laboratory. He obtained extramural support from the Office of Naval Research, energy research agencies(AEC, ERDA, and DOE), the National Science Foundation and DARPA to build research activity probing innovative computer architectures, parallel processing models of computation, computer instrumentation, and computer networks. As a result a substantial body of doctorate dissertations, masters theses and contributions to technical literature in computer engineering already existed by 1968 when the formal proposal to establish a Computer Science Department was made. Some of the early faculty appointments, in addition to Karplus and Estrin were: A. Avizienis(1962), B. Bussell(1960), J. Carlyle(1963), L. Kleinrock(1963), M. Melkanoff(1962) and A. Svoboda(1968). Melkanoff had extensive experience with computational physics and computer programming methods; he became the sparkplug for development of a computer science curriculum and formal establishment of a Computer Science Department at UCLA. Algirdas Avizienis retained his association with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory while he advanced his seminal work on fault tolerance. Leonard Kleinrock had finished his work at MIT and intended to move into industrial research but was attracted to the UCLA engineering faculty in the Information Systems Division. Kleinrock's contributions to computer communications, queueing analysis, development of the ARPANET and teaching excellence have set remarkable standards for his colleagues ever since.

* 1968-69 -- Formal Establishment of the UCLA CSD

There was campuswide interest in supporting a computer science program. In addition to computer engineering, there were faculty and research staff in: biomathematics, business administration, the campus computing network, other engineering specialties, library service, mathematics, physiology, psychology and public health. By 1968, there were eleven faculty members of the School of Engineering who were involved in teaching and research in computer science related areas. In addition to the faculty mentioned above, this group included D. F. Martin, L. P. McNamee and J. Vidal. An Information Systems Division had been established in the School of Engineering; 70 Masters and 43 PhD students were pursuing studies in system design, numerical applications and computer languages. On May 24, 1968, "A Proposal For A Program Of Graduate Studies In Computer Sciencs For The MS and PhD Degrees" was submitted to the Academic Senate Graduate Council. For historical interest, selected excerpts of that program are presented below:

"(1) Aims of the program

The aims of the proposed program are:

1. To provide the necessary courses, faculty and administrative structure to allow graduate students to obtain M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science at UCLA.

2. To provide necessary training, service and advanced courses in Computer Science to the whole student body and the faculty.

3. To provide a focus for teaching, research and development in Computer Science to the campus, as a whole.

"(2) Definition of Computer Science

"The role of Computer Science, its importance and its relationship to other fields may be described as follows:

The predictive power of the inductive sciences, such as physics and chemistry, is predicated upon the use of symbolic models, consisting of idealized objects, corresponding to real objects, whose interaction is described through a set of mathematical axioms. The application of mathematical theorems to these axioms yield theoretical prediction which may be compared with events in the real world, thus establishing the validity of the model within a certain domain. Other sciences have attempted to develop symbolic models with considerably less success, due to the complexity required for a realistic model. The advent of the digital computer has greatly facilitated the construction, utilization and verification of such models, thereby providingnew predictive powers to many disciplines which hitherto were limited to qualitative modeling, leading to uncertain predictions. For this to be effective and meaningful, however, the issue of what constitutes "realizable" models must be delineated and explored. Thus, the primary aim of computer science is to enhance scholarly advance by increasing our understanding of what constitutes realizable models and to extending the scope of realizability."

The proposal went on to delineate programs and courses based on CURRICULUM 68 - Recommendation for Academic Program in Computer Science, published in "A report of the ACM Curriculum Committee on Computer Science, Com. ACM March, 1968."

The proposal to establish the Computer Science Department in the School of Engineering and Applied Science was approved to begin in the 1968-69 academic year.