Computing in the high school---past, present and future: and its unreasonable effectiveness in the teaching of mathematics

Five years ago computing was trickling into the secondary school scene, but today it's a torrent. Various hardware and software developments over the last two decades have made the computer ever more appropriate for this environment. These developments were: the shared program; the replacement of vacuum tubes by cores; compilers and procedural languages and finally---time sharing. The latest development has been the great reduction in the price of time sharing over the last year.