The publication of this first issue of the Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP) is an important milestone in the history of logic programming. The field of logic programming started in the early 1970s and is based on the seminal work of J. Alan Robinson who developed the well-known Robinson resolution principle that revolutioned the field of automated reasoning and upon which logic programming is based. The field of logic programming was created by Alain Colmerauer and Robert Kowalski in the early 1970sIn addition to Colmerauer and Kowalski, others had conceived of similar concepts at about the same time: Ted Elcock developed a system ABSET, which was basically a logic programming system and Carl Hewitt developed Planner, which although advertised as a procedural-oriented system, had a declarative component.. Alain Colmerauer and his group developed the first logic programming language, Prolog (PROgrammation en LOGique).

Robert Kowalski modified the resolution principle by limiting it to Horn clauses and by extending it to a formalism amenable for computing. His work with van Emden provided semantic foundations to this approach to programming. The importance of logic programming is that it is a declarative rather than a procedural programming language.