This document introduces Spark, including when it was created, what it is, and why it was developed. Spark was created in 2009 at the AMPLab at UC Berkeley. It is now a top-level Apache project that provides a fast and general engine for large-scale data processing. It has high-level APIs for Scala, Python, R and Java and can be used for SQL, streaming, machine learning and graph processing. The document discusses Spark's programming model and demos its use for applications like Monte Carlo simulation and financial analysis.