► Chapter 1 offers a brief history of the ideas that support and enable the discipline of artificial intelligence. First, we describe the mythology behind the use of knowledge and skill to improve the human condition. This claimed usurpation of the powers of the gods by Aeschylus, see chapter heading, is often seen as a challenge to common sense as well as an act of human arrogance. Second, we describe the seventeenth through twentieth century mathematics and engineering that laid the foundation for the sciences of computing and artificial intelligence. We then present Alan Turing’s test for intelligence published in 1950 in the journal Mind. Finally, we describe the 1956 Dartmouth Summer Workshop where the name “artificial intelligence” was adopted and where, for the first time, AI research areas were identified and described.