"Kind of Cl'Ude ~ but it UJorks~ boy~ it UJOrksl" Alan Ner. ueH to Herb Simon~ C1rl'istmas 1955 In 1954 a computer program produced what appears to be the first computer generated mathematical proof: Written by M. Davis at the Institute of Advanced Studies, USA, it proved a number theoretic theorem in Presburger Arithmetic. Christmas 1955 heralded a computer program which generated the first proofs of some propositions of Principia Mathematica, developed by A. Newell, J. Shaw, and H. Simon at RAND Corporation, USA. In Sweden, H. Prawitz, D. Prawitz, and N. Voghera produced the first general program for the full first order predicate calculus to prove mathematical theorems; their computer proofs were obtained around 1957 and 1958, about the same time that H. Gelernter finished a computer program to prove simple high school geometry theorems. Since the field of computational logic (or automated theorem proving) is emerging from the ivory tower of academic research into real world applications, asserting also a definite place in many university curricula, we feel the time has come to examine and evaluate its history. The article by Martin Davis in the first of this series of volumes traces the most influential ideas back to the 'prehistory' of early logical thought showing how these ideas influenced the underlying concepts of most early automatic theorem proving programs.

The Prehistory and Early History of Automated Deduction.- Mechanical Proof Search and the Theory of Logical Deduction in the USSR.- 1957.- A Computer Program for Presburger's Algorithm.- Empirical Explorations with the Logic Theory Machine: A Case Study in Heuristics.- Proving a Theorem (as Done by Man, Logician or Machine).- 1958.- On Machines Which Prove Theorems.- 1959.- A non-heuristic Program for Proving Elementary Logical Theorems.- Realization of a Geometry-Theorem Proving Machine.- 1960.- A Computing Procedure for Quantification Theory.- Empirical Explorations of the Geometry-Theorem Proving Machine.- A Proof Method for Quantification Theory: Its Justification and Realization.- An Improved Proof Procedure.- A Mechanical Proof Procedure and its Realization in an Electronic Computer.- Proving Theorems by Pattern Recognition.- Toward Mechical Mathematics.- 1962.- A Machine Program for Theorem Proving.- Theorem Testing by Computer.- Exploratory Mathematics by Machine.- Machine-Generated Problem-Solving Graphs.- 1963.- Eliminating the Irrelevant from Mechanical Proofs.- A Semi-Decision Procedure for the Functional Calculus.- A Computer Program for a Solvable Case of the Decision Problem.- A Simplified Proof Method for Elementary Logic.- Theorem-Proving on the Computer.- 1964.- The Unit Preference Strategy in Theorem Proving.- 1965.- A Machine Oriented Logic Based on the Resolution Principle.- Automatic Deduction with Hyper-Resolution.- An Algorithm for a Machine Search of a Natural Logical Deduction in a Propositional Calculus.- Efficiency and Completeness of the Set of Support Strategy in Theorem Proving.- 1966.- Theorem-Proving for Computers: Some Results on Resolution and Renaming.- Bibliography on Computational Logic.