The place of computers in the teaching of physics

For many years now the education of physicists has been limited by the necessity of restricting classroom attention to stylistic examples and laboratory attention to fairly cheap and limited exercises. The introduction of the computer into the classroom and laboratory removes these constraints and in turn permits the training of a new breed of computational physicists. The authors define and investigate the current usage of computers within university departments of physics by outlining the chronology of their introduction and their role in the new subject of computational physics.