We investigate the origin of recursive procedures in imperative programming languages. We attempt to set the record straight, and to identify the trend that led to recursive procedures, by means of an analysis of the related concepts and of the most reliable available documents, as far as known to us. We show that not all of those who were involved in defining these concepts in these documents were fully aware of the implications of their proposals. Our aim is not primarily historical, but to contribute to a clarification of some of the concepts related to recursion. In particular, we demonstrate that recursive procedure declarations and recursive procedure activations are logically disjoint concepts.

Abstract. We investigate the motives to practice history, and the role that history could play for a scientific discipline. We consider these questions successively from three interrelated points of view: "history: why?" ( § 1), "history: for whom?" ( § 2), and "history: how?" ( § 3). Only the second of these sections is specific to the field of computing; the two other ones are more general, and could probably be applied to other fields as well. Needless to say, the responses that we propose are elements rather than definitive answers; the author also apologizes in advance if these reflections turn out to be nothing but platitudes: he was not trained as a historian, and it is very well possible that these three questions have already received more convincing answers elsewhere.

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