HaPoC was established in 2013 as DHST Commission in Manchester, UK during ICHST, following the activities of a Steering Committee with the same name, and co-commissioned by DLMPST during CLMPST in Helsinki in 2015.
The idea of having a HaPoC commission finds its origins with the HaPoC steering committee. This committee was assembled just after the first International Conference on the History and Philosophy of Computing. This conference showed that there exists a real need amongst a wide diversity of people (historians, philosophers, mathematicians, logicians, artists, professionals, etc) interested in HaPoC-related topics, to have a platform for discussion and collaborations. As such, the idea originated that HaPoC might be turned into an interdisciplinary bi-annual conference series and plans were made to have a second conference in Paris. The steering committee consisted of: Gerard Alberts, Liesbeth De Mol, Helena Durnova, Benedikt Loewe, Giuseppe Primiero and Ray Turner. Several other HaPoC-related events were planned and the idea of creating a HaPoC inter-division commission between DLMPS and DHST DHST emerged.
DHST (Division for History of Science and Technology) and DLMPS (Division for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science) are the two main divisions of the
International Union for History and Philosophy of Science (IUHPS) which was created in 1956. Before that time these two divisions were separated unions of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) which is under the patronage of UNESCO since 1945. Both DHST and DLMPS hold quadrennial conferences. The last DHST conference (ICHST) was held in 2025 in Dunedin, New Zealand, and the last DLMPS conference (CLMPST) was held in 2023 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Upcoming conferences are going to be in Kobe, Japan in 2027 (CLMPST) and Paris, France in 2029 (ICHST).
DHST and DLMPS each group and support several different commissions specialized in topics relevant for the respective divisions. Besides the regular commissions there are also inter-division commissions, viz. commissions that focus on topics relevant to both divisions.