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Timeline of knowledge-representation (part three, 1938-1969)

1938

1930s: math tables distributed as punchcard decks [cite]

1930s: analog simulation of electric power grids [passim]

1938: Shannon's "Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits"
1938: "International Encyclopedia of Unified Science" ed by Neurath, Carnap, and Morris [crit]

1938: 1st edition of 'Outline of Cultural Materials' (anthropology) [cite]

126 Recording and Collecting in the Field
389 Manufacture of Explosives
476 Mutual Aid
573 Cliques
755 Magical and Mental Therapy
728 Peacemaking
834 General Sex Restrictions [current]

1938: advances in ballistics theory require new tables [cite]

1938-1942: Gertrude Blanch directs WPA's mathematical tables project [bio] ballistics calculations for the Army, navigation tables for the Navy, and (later) fundamental calculations for the Manhattan Project

1939

1939: Richardson's 'Generalized Foreign Politics: a study in group psychology' [site]

"Effects, when conspicuous, may be classified as submission at one extreme, negotiation or avoidance in the middle, and retaliation at the other extreme."

1939: Danton's "Library of Tomorrow: a symposium" ("punch-drunk from the impact of scientific achievement" crit)

1939: 1st electron microscope

1939: Bell Labs demos crude speech-synthesizer at World's Fair

1939: 04May: Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" (probably a universal psychological indexing-system) [info]

"Let us swop hats and excheck a few strong verbs weak oach eather yapyazzard abast the blooty creeks."

historical archetypes incl: HCE, ALP, Issy, Tristan, Shaun-Kevin, Shem-Jerry, Kate, Sackerson, Mamalujo, 12 citizens, 28 rainbow girls, letter/book/city

no-date: FBI rejects Vannevar Bush's proposal for microfilm-based fingerprint-search [cite]

1939: Bush's unsuccessful prototype Microfilm Rapid Selector uses photoelectric cells [cite] one decimal subject-code per frame [cite]

1939: Batten indexes patent literature with optical-coincidence cards [cite]

1939: Stibitz's Complex Number Computer for Bell Labs [history] used to design telephone circuits (amplifiers and filters)

1939: German mechanical simulation of A-4 (V2) rocket [cite]

WW2: computing teams calculate ballistics trajectories, shock wave propagation, navigation tables, efficient bombing plans, radar reflections, optimal production strategies, and likely cipher keys [cite] high-explosives theory, heat flow in rocket tubes, servomechanisms, blast propagation, mine-design [cite]

Royal Aircraft Establishment uses punchcards to analyse stresses in aircraft [cite]

1939-1943: Kurath's Linguistic Atlas of the United States [info]

1939-1944: Aiken's Mark I Relay Computer (Automatic Sequence-Controlled Calculator) [cite] [pic] calculates tables of Bessel functions [history]

1940

1940: 22yo Jay Forrester works at MIT's Servomechanisms Lab [cite]

1940: Clark Hull's "Mathematico-Deductive Theory of Rote Learning" offers 54 theorems deduced from 18 postulates

1940: Van de Waal proposes classification for topographical data [cite]

1940: Eckert's "Punched Card Methods in Scientific Calculation" [cite]

1940: Shaw's "Elements of a theory of inventory" [history]

1940: Rediffusion builds 1st air-navigation trainer [cite] related developments for gunnery instruction, torpedo attack trainer, tank trainer, night vision tester, fixed-gun trainer

1940: von Karman suggests Hans Bethe try to model shock waves (von Neumann's ideas for shaping charges will prove disappointing)

1940: 11Sep: remote demo of Bell's Complex Number Computer witnessed by von Neumann, Wiener, Erdos, Birkhoff, Courant [cite]

1940: Atanasoff and Mauchly compare notes (applying same tech to different domains) [cite]

1941

1941: Atanasoff-Berry Computer solves linear equations for theoretical physics [cite]

1941: electronic analog simulation of A-4 rocket [cite]

1941: 25yo Robert McNamara teaching management-via-statistics at Harvard, consults extensively for War Dept until 1945

1941: Aug: Japanese wargame predicts Axis victory, suggests Pearl-Harbor strategy [cite]

1941: 09Oct: Bush convinces Roosevelt to fund atom bomb

1941: Dec: Zuse's Z3 built to solve wing-flutter design problem [cite] 1st use of floating-point representation

1942

1942: Colossus models German code-machine [cite]

1942: Mauchly's "The Use of Vacuum Tube Devices for Calculating" [cite] [more]

1942: von Neumann consults with Rossby on numerical meteorology

1942: Quincy Wright's "Study of War" includes some math models

1942: Dodd's "Dimensions of Society: a quantitative systematics for the social sciences" builds notation on 12 symbols incl space, time, population, characteristics; plus various modifiers

1942: 01Sep: von Neumann hired by US Navy's Antisubmarine Warfare Operations Research Group; 2nd-guesses German mine-deployment strategy [cite]

1942: 1st Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

1942: Borges essay "The Analytic Language of John Wilkins" proposes worst-case animal-typology [etext]

"belonging to the Emperor, embalmed, trained, sloppy, sirens, fabulous, stray dogs, included in this classification, trembling like crazy, innumerable, drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, et cetera, having just broken the vase, from a distance look like flies"

1942: Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI, Jungian personality types) Extraversion-Introversion, Sensing-Intuition, Thinking-Feeling, Judging-Perceiving [info]

1942: Draper's Mark 14 gunsight uses gyroscope [cite] evolved into ICBM guidance

1942? Bell's M-9 Gun Director uses analog electronics [info] (developed using simulations which will inspire 1943's Relay Interpolator)

'operational amplifier'

no-date: analog-controls for antiaircraft guns [passim] [more]

no-date: Travis mechanical-serial adding machines

1943

1943: von Neumann studies blast-physics in England

1943: McCulloch and Pitts' "Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity" [info]

1943: Zuse's S1 for fine-tuning of flying bombs [info]

1943: Bell Telephone Labs PBM-3 electronic flight trainer

1943: 1st description of 'white noise' [cite]

1943: 02Apr: Mauchly's electronic differential analyzer proposal [cite] [history] became Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC) cost $500k [tech]

1943: 16Apr: discovery of LSD

1943: Craik's "The Nature of Explanation" finally proposes the idea of mental models [info] (anticipated by Boltzmann in 1899)

"By a model we thus mean any physical or chemical system which has a similar relation-structure to that of the process it imitates... My hypothesis is that thought models reality-- that its essential feature is symbolism, and that this symbolism is largely of the same kind as that which is familiar to us in mechanical devices which aid thought and calculation." [extract]

1943: Maslow's "Theory of Human Motivation" (basic needs: physiological, safety, love, esteem, self-actualization) [etext]

1943: McLuhan analyses history of ideas in terms of classical trivium (rhetoric, grammar, dialectic) [essay]

1943: Dutton's Speedwords [info] (book->bu, writing->ri, liberation->lib, efficiency->ef, gratitude->gra)

1943: 06Sep: Churchill advocates Basic English for propaganda? [cite]

1943: Sep: Oppenheimer asks von Neumann to investigate implosion-principle for atom bomb [history] Feynmann optimises punchcard algorithms [cite]

1943-1945: Admiralty Computing Service investigates theory of supersonic flow, stresses in turbines, and a statistical investigation into the night vision capabilities of naval personnel [cite]

no-date: Charles Hitch (future RANDian) planning how to destroy Nazi economy [cite]

1944

1944: Schroedinger's "What Is Life?"

1944: Columbia U's Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASR) [history]

1944: von Neumann and Morgenstern "Theory of Games and Economic Behavior" (introduces term 'zero-sum' cite)

1944: Jun: von Neumann consults with ENIAC team on stored programming [cite]

"suggested that code selection be made by means of switches so that cable connections could remain fixed for most standard trajectory problems" [cite]

1944: Forrester undertakes design of reprogrammable analog computer for aviation design and flight simulation for Navy [cite] Airplane Stability and Control Analyzer (ASCA) [info]

1944-1951: work on EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Calculator/Computer) [cite] used mercury-quartz delay lines with 1k-words storage capacity, 1MHz, binary representation, teletype-and-magnetic-wire i/o, cost $500k [history]

high altitude trajectories, solar and lunar trajectories, guidance control, propellants, detonation waves, vibration, flow of fluids, nuclear, fragmentation, and penetration effects, satellite spin, satellite tracking, wargames, linear programming for logistics, kill probabilities

1945

1945: Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think" 1st knowledge interface design 'Memex' [etext]

1945: Polya's "How to Solve It"

1945: Hadamard's "Psychology of invention in the mathematical field"

1945: Cordonnier's punchcard system for libraries? [passim] [crit]

1945: Murdock's 62 human universals [list]

1945? Bell Labs sound spectrograph [info]

no-date: Universal Studios indexes movie-plots on punchcards [rcl]

1945? McNamara and fellow whiz-kids move from US military to Ford

1945: 30Jun: von Neumann's "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC" (central arithmetical unit, central control unit, and memory) writes sort-and-merge routine

1945: 01Oct: Hap Arnold et al. start Project RAND (Research ANd Development) [history]

1945: Oct: IAS and RCA agree to fund 1st von Neumann computer (design explicitly in public domain)

1945: 19Nov: Life magazine article based on Hap Arnold's vision of '36-hour' nuclear war

1945: Nov: ENIAC test-runs simulate nuclear chain-reactions [cite] neutron diffusion modeled using Monte Carlo method (after 1946?) [cite] for hydrogen bomb [cite] requires 1M punched cards for input [cite]

could store ten 10-digit decimal numbers, i/o via card-reader/card-punch

"The ENIAC was built primarily for integration of the equations of external ballistics by a step-by-step process, but it was flexible enough to be applied to a wide range of large-scale computations other than numerical integration of differential equations... weather prediction, atomic energy calculations, cosmic ray studies, thermal ignition, random number studies, wind tunnel design, and other scientific uses." [cite]

von Neumann predicts use of computers for quantum mechanics, hydrodynamics of turbulence, elasticity and plasticity, 3D electrodynamics, optics, stellar astronomy

1946

1946: Jan: Navy crypto lab privatised as Engineering Research Associates (ERA) [cite]

1946: Feb: 1st public demo of ENIAC [cite] War Dept pr describes "The Uses of Computers in Industry"

1946: 05Mar: Churchill's 'Iron Curtain' speech marks start of Cold War-- aerial reconnaissance becomes defense priority, targeting Soviet missile program and nuclear program

1946: von Neumann consults with meteorologists about computer modelling [cite]

IAS Numerical Meteorology Project at Princeton

1946: Jul: ENIAC simulates wing aerodynamics [cite]

1946: Turing proposes 'Automatic Computing Engine' (ACE), designs chess-playing algorithms

1946: Morse and Kimball's "Methods of Operations Research" (classified until 1951) [cite]

1946: Lewis Kelso proposes 'LawDex' to automate legal research (inspired by Memex) [rcl]

1946: Dyson's alphanumeric notation system for chemical structures [cite]

1946: Wright's slotted-wall makes supersonic wind-tunnels practical [info]

1946: nuclear magnetic resonance

1946: Ulam's Monte Carlo method for simulations (repetitive runs w/ random values) [1949?] [cite]

1940s: punchcard autopilot demonstrated [cite]

1947

1947: IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC)

1947: RAND begins recruiting social scientists [cite]

1947: RAND explores high-altitude balloon reconnaissance

1947: carbon-14 dating

1947: 04Mar: machine-translation discussed by Weaver and Wiener [info]

1947: Apr: 1st Curta calculators [history]

1947: summer: Feynman diagrams [cite]

1947: Dantzig's linear programming, Simplex Method for RAND [cite]

1947: Rashevsky's "Mathematical Theory of Human Relations"

1947: Nov: 1st computer course offered at Columbia [cite] "we hardly ever get any students interested in the machines for their own sake"

late 1940s: analog computer calculates lens-shapes [info]

1948

1948? Charney suggests weather-prediction will require hierarchy of increasingly-complex atmosphere-models

1948: Shannon's "Mathematical Theory of Communication" [etext]

"The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point."

1948: Wiener's "Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine"

Wiener's approach [to the relation of computers to the brain] was through the notion of feedback, wherein the output of a process was compared with a goal and the difference used to control the process [crit]

servomechanisms-etc offer alternative to behaviorist psychology [Agre]

1948: Gabor's holography

1948: Welch Medical Library Indexing Project [cite]

1948: Mooers' "Application of random codes to the gathering of statistical information" (Zatocoding on edge-notched cards, anticipates hashing) [cite] [pg imgs]

1948: Richens explores machine-translation via punchcards, splitting roots from endings [info]

1948: Royal Society Scientific Information Conference explores how people use information

1948: Bernal's "Provisional Scheme for central distribution of scientific publications" [crit]

1948: Richardson's 'War Moods' (mathematical model of arms race) [info]

1948: 14May: RAND incorporates as nonprofit [history]

no-date: Ed Paxson at RAND studies Sun Tzu; Olaf Helmer organizes games of Kriegspiel (strategy-heavy German blind-chess game); Charles Hitch studies economic effects of bombing; Social Science Dept analyses Soviet behavior and the effects of war on morale; Paxson organizes analysis of air campaign against USSR (1st 'systems analysis') [cite]

1948: US Air Force chooses RAND to manage satellite program [cite]

1948: Jul: US Army initiates General Research Office (later Operations Research Office) to apply operations research to tactics [cite]

1948: IBM 610 Auto-Point Computer w/1st magnetic drum memory [cite]

1949

1949: RAND's Handbook on the Theory of Games

1949: Ed Barlow at RAND directs systems-analysis of US vulnerability to air-attack [cite] broken down into flowchart incl Soviet threat, target selection, fighter design, airborne radar, ground radar, ground observers, weapons, antiaircraft guns, bombing tactics

1949: Wilkes' EDSAC

1949: Ed Link's F-80 jet simulator uses electronic analog computer [cite] [more]

1949: ERCO (Engineering and Research Corp) builds electronic flight sims [cite]

1949: Jay Forrester's Whirlwind (digital hardware for aeronautics sim) [pix]

1949: Draper's FEBE system at MIT (gyro-based aircraft navigation) [cite]

1949: von Neumann calculates pi to 2037 places using ENIAC [cite]

1949: Orwell's '1984' predicts books and music composed by machines, 'Newspeak' exaggeration of Basic English

"...suggestion contained item six doubleplus ridiculous verging crimethink cancel stop unproceed constructionwise antegetting plusful estimates machinery overheads..."

1949: Ed Paxson at RAND suggests Richard Bellman explore 'multistage decision processes' (later dynamic programming) [history]

"the thought was finally forced upon me that the desired solution in a control process was a policy: 'Do thus-and-thus if you find yourself in this portion of state space with this amount of time left.'"

1949-1952: ORDVAC for ballistic and 'vulnerability' calcs [history] can be operated semi-remotely via teletype

1949: BINAC (Binary Automatic Computer for Northrop-- flight simulation?) Aug 1950?

1949: Sep: Ratio Club explores cybernetics (incl Turing, Ashby, Walter) [info] [more]

1949: Joseph Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces" sketches 'monomyth' [info]

call to adventure, refusal, supernatural aid, crossing the threshold, belly of the whale, road of trials, meeting with goddess, temptress, atonement, apotheosis, boon, refusal of return, magic flight, rescue, return, master of two worlds, freedom to live

1949: Zipf's "Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort"

1949: Jul: Warren Weaver speculates on a universal language to aid machine translation [info]

1949: Nov: Bill Phillips unveils hydraulic economic model [info]

1950

1950: Jan: 1st issue of 'American Documentation' (renamed Journal of the American Society for Information Science in 1970) [tour]

1950: 10Jan: Reifler proposes machine translation be assisted by human 'pre-editor' markup [cite]

1950: Mar: Mooers coins term 'information retrieval' [cite] "Information Retrieval Viewed as Temporal Signaling" [cite]

1950: Mar: ENIAC finally generates numerical weather-forecast based on Bjerknes's 1910 principles (N America divided into 15*18 grid; required 100k+ punchcards) [info]

1950: Alan Turing "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" [etext]

1950: Shannon's "Programming a Computer for Playing Chess"

1950: Ulam and von Neumann's cellular automata theory [cite] included a way of constructing reliable computers from unreliable components and a theory of self-reproducing machines [cite]

1950: Doug Lenat born in Philadelphia [info]

1950: Zenith 'Lazy Bone' remote control for teevee

1950: Forrester's Whirlwind research redirected to SAGE (Semi-Automated Ground Environment) [history] [cite]

realtime calculation (and control) of intercept courses against attacking aircraft; requires 1st automatic analog-to-digital conversion

1950: Patent Office unsuccessful experiments with automated search [cite]

1950: IBM's Electronic Statistical Machine [cite]

1950: 30Nov: Kaplan proposes machine-translation take into account the words before and after the target word [cite]

1950s: Amundson and Aris advocate mathematical modeling for chemical engineers [cite]

1951

1951: Engineering Research Associates' ERA 1103 (1st electronic computer to market)

1951: UNIVACs begin shipping (one to Census Bureau, two to Air Materiel Command: cite)

1951: IBM hires von Neumann?

1951: Bar-Hillel surveys potential of machine translation [info] emphasizes problem of semantic ambiguity, recommends artificial exchange-language

1951: JE Holmstrom astutely predicts failure of machine-translation dream [cite]

1951: US Army's Combat Operations Research Group (CORG) [info]

1951: US Air Force asks RAND to analyse location of overseas airbases (rethinking toplevel strategy) [cite]

1951: preprogrammed plugboards added to ENIAC [cite]

1951: Lewin's posthumous "Field Theory in Social Science" (paths, barriers, regions; 'topological psych')

1951: Haykin's "Subject Headings: a practical guide" [cite]

1951: Cybernetics Congress held in Paris

1951: Tinbergen's "Study of Instinct" proposes 'ethograms' (Baconian inventories of species-behavior) [cite]

1951: Arrow, Harris, and Marschak's "Optimal inventory policy" [cite]

1951: Casey and Perry's "Punched Cards: Their Applications to Science and Industry"

1951: Rashevsky's "Mathematical Biology of Social Behavior"

1951: 04Sep: Taube's "Coordinate Indexing of Scientific Fields" proposes each indexing-term 'know' all docs that mention that term, allowing boolean operations (cf Altavista)

1951: Sep: IBM's Electronic Information Searching System (aka Luhn Scanner) will be adopted for CIA info-retrieval [cite]

1952

1952: Mortimer Adler compiles 'Syntopicon' using index-cards (3000-category philosophy markup-language) [more]

102 Great Ideas: Astronomy, Element, Matter, Mechanics, Nature, Physics, World, Animal, Evolution, Immortality, Life and Death, Man, Medicine, Progress, Sense, Soul, Desire, Emotion, Experience, Habit, Happiness, Mind, Pleasure and Pain, Definition, Dialectic, Form, Hypothesis, Idea, Induction, Knowledge, Logic, Memory and Imagination, Opinion, Reasoning, Science, Truth, Wisdom, Being, Cause, Change, Eternity, Infinity, Mathematics, One and Many, Opposition, Principle, Quality, Quantity, Relation, Same and Other, Space, Time, Universal and Particular, Art, Beauty, Language, Poetry, Rhetoric, Sign and Symbol, Courage, Custom and Convention, Duty, Education, Family, Good and Evil, Honor, Judgment, Labor, Love, Prudence, Sin, Temperance, Virtue and Vice, Will, Aristocracy, Citizen, Constitution, Democracy, Government, History, Justice, Law, Liberty, Monarchy, Oligarchy, Punishment, Revolution, Slavery, State, Tyranny, War and Peace, Wealth, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Religion, Theology, Angel, Chance, Fate, God, Necessity and Contingency, Prophecy

(I find this list stunningly noble!)

1952: Ashby's "Design for a Brain"

1952: Raydac for missile testing [passim]

1952: Simulation Councils, Incorporated founded as collection of regional councils [cite]

1952: Hallig and Wartburg concept-classification scheme/thesaurus

1952: Classification Research Group in UK rejects Dewey and LoC as top-down, explores bottom-up approach [info] Physical Entities, Chemical Entities, Heterogeneous Non-Living Entities, Artefacts, Biological Entities, Man, Mentefacts

1952? early attempts to apply propositional calculus to US tax code [rcl]

1952: Filmorex filing system for microfilmed documents [cite]

1952: Jun: 1st machine-translation conference at MIT [account] Bar-Hillel stresses syntactic parsing (Jay Forrester attends)

1952: Aug: IAS weather team successfully models storm of 25Nov 1950

1952: Nov: Univac predicts Eisenhower landslide [cite]

1952-1953: 1st generation of von-Neumann machines: IAS, MANIAC, JOHNNIAC, AVIDAC, ORDVAC, ORACLE, ILLIAC, and IBM 701

1953

1953: Mar: 1st Symposium on Machine Methods for Scientific Documentation [cite] [more]

1953: 27Mar: 1st of 19 IBM 701s [timeline] most were used for aircraft design [uses]

1953: Watson and Crick crack genetic code

1953: Walter's cybernetic turtles

1953: Shannon gives 26yo Marvin Minsky and 26yo John McCarthy summer jobs at Bell Labs

1953: Charles Roberts' wargame 'Tactics'

1953: SAC general predicts "the nation which first learns to plot the paths of air masses accurately and learns to control the time and place of precipitation will dominate the globe" [cite]

1953: Metropolis's Monte-Carlo simulation [cite]

1953: Taube's Uniterm Indexing System [cite]

1953: analog model of atmospheric circulation using rotating pan of colored liquid [passim]

1953: 30Oct: RAND buys IBM 701 for "economics, mathematics, aircraft, missiles, electronics, nuclear energy, and social sciences" [cite]

1953: RAND study "Efficiency and Economy in Government Through New Budgeting and Accounting Procedures" [cite]

1953: Draper's Space Inertial Reference Equipment (SPIRE) [cite]

1954

1954: Draper's MAST (Marine Stable Element) and SINS (Submarine Inertial Navigation System) [cite]

1954: 07Jan: demo of Georgetown-IBM machine translator [account] Russian to English, 250-word vocab, IBM 701

"'Mi pyeryedayem mislyi posryedstvom ryechyi,' the girl punched. And the 701 responded: 'We transmit thoughts by means of speech.'"

"What the electronic translators have actually done is to create an entirely new electronic language. They have taken normal words and attached to them tags or signs which give each word a precision it does not usually possess. These signs actually denote rules of grammar and meaning. Although only six rules were used in today's demonstration, the six were enough to cover all the words in all the sentences the 701 was asked to translate."

"The six rules govern transposition of words where that is required in order to make sense, choice of meanings where a word has more than one interpretation, omission of words that are not required for a correct translation, and insertion of words that are required to make sense."

"What IBM's astonishing 701 actually did... was to create within itself a working model of another 'brain' specially designed to handle logic instead of mathematics." [pr]

1954: Feb: RAND report on potential missile technologies (Augenstein) [cite] RAND/Collbohm rejects 'system engineering role' for ICBM, which goes to Ramo-Woolridge (aka Space Technology Labs)

1954: Mar: RAND builds Johnniac computer (1953?) [info]

1954: 1st general computerised info-retrieval system on IBM 701 using Uniterm indexing [info] 15k bibliographic records [cite]

1954: Joint Numerical Weather Prediction Unit (US Weather Bureau, Air Force, Navy) [passim]

1954: Wallace Stevens' transcendental "Of Mere Being" [etext]

The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze distance...

1954: GE buys a Univac for accounting, manufacturing planning and control functions [cite] Arthur Andersen handles the payroll software [cite]

1954: RAND's 'Feedback Report' (ed Lipp and Salter) surveys military uses of space [cite]

1954: Link Aviation merges with General Precision Equipment [cite]

1954: BF Skinner's programmed instruction [crit]

1954: Garfield's "The preparation of subject-heading lists by automatic punched-card techniques" [cite]

1954: Dec: RAND wargame (US/USSR) includes computer model [cite]

1954: Dec: Swedish weather bureau 1st to offer computer forecasts [cite]

1955

c1955: US Army's 'Carmonette' (Monte Carlo tactical sim) [info]

simulated company-level counterattack against defending Soviet company... explicitly represented aiming, firing, moving, etc

1955: 1st industrial-robot design

1955: RAND publishes book of 1M random digits [cite]

1955: Computer Usage Corporation simulates oil-flow [cite]

1955: ESSO applies operations research to oil refinery functions [cite]

1955: 15May: start of numerical weather forecasting by JNWPU using IBM 701 (600 grid-boxes at 3 altitudes) requires explicit treatment of error, anomaly, and interpolation [cite]

1955: summer: Phillips' "The General Circulation of the Atmosphere: a numerical experiment"

1955: Smagorinsky's General Circulation Research Section at US Weather Bureau [history]

1955: Charney praises weather-simulations on computers as effective "induction device" [cite]

1955: 1st numerical control of machine tools [cite]

1955: Benesh Movement Notation for ballet [history]

1955: Brown's 'Loglan' will become Lojban (1300 simplified roots) [website]

1955: Termatrex Index (boolean searches, but not a computer) [cite]

1955: Perry's WRU Searching Selector (aka WRU System, ASM-WRU System, Perry-Kent System, and ASM Mark I System; boolean search of paper tape w/abstracts of metallurgy articles; 5-10 concurrent searches) [cite] [more]

1955-1960? Perry and Kent's keyword-analysis for metallurgy [info] [cite]

1950s: Ceccato represents verbs/events for automatic translation as sequences of static frames [cite] (this is central to my Anti-Math, 1980 below)

1956

1956: Miller's "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information" [etext]

1956: Weed's Problem-Oriented Medical Record (systematic patient knowledgebase) [info]

1956: Ulam's chess program Maniac I beats novice on 6*6 board

1956: Project Genetrix recovers 44 of 560 balloon reconnaissance payloads after USSR overflights

1956: Kleene's "Representation of events in nerve nets and finite automata" lays groundwork for regular expressions [info]

1956: Institute for Mathematics and Computers in Simulation (IMACS) founded as AICA?

1956: Rockefeller funds Minsky and McCarthy's AI conference at Dartmouth

1956: Richens 'Nude' (1st semantic net, 80 primitives like folk, stuff, man, thing: cite) [info]

1956: Newman's "Problems in mechanizing the search in examining patent applications" [cite] [crit]

1956: Forrester switches from SAGE to business [bio] invents 'system dynamics'

1956: Plass warns CO2 can cause global warming

1956: Aiken's "The Future of Automatic Computing Machinery" [cite]

"... if it should ever turn out that the basic logics of a machine designed for the numerical solution of differential equations coincide with the logics of a machine intended to make bills for a department store, I would regard this as the most amazing coincidence that I have ever encountered."

1956: JL Austin's "A Plea for Excuses" and "Ifs and Cans" (ordinary language analysis) [bio] demonstrated that our 'ear' for language-use has a subtle wisdom of its own [summary] [ditto]

"Is it not possible that the next century may see the birth, through the joint efforts of philosophers, grammarians, and numerous other students of language, of a true and comprehensive science of language? Then we shall have rid ourselves of one more part of philosophy (there will still be plenty left) in the only way we ever can get rid of philosophy, by kicking it upstairs."

"Ordinary language embodies the metaphysics of the Stone Age... Our common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connexions they have found worth making, in the lifetimes of many generation; these surely are likely to be more numerous, more sound, since they have stood up to the long test of the survival of the fittest, and more subtle, at least in all ordinary and reasonably practical matters, than any that you or I are likely to think up in our arm-chairs of an afternoon-- the most favoured alternative method."

1956: Jun: CIA funds GAT machine-translation project (General Analysis Technique, or Georgetown Automatic Translation) [info] domain-specific for organic chemistry

1956: Newell, Shaw, and Simon's Logic Theorist (embodies 10 heuristics)

1956: GE's Mark I report generator [cite]

1956: Buchholz coins term 'byte' [cite]

1956: Boulding's "The Image: knowledge of life in society"

"It is my image of the world that largely governs my behavior."

1957

1957: Newell, Shaw, and Simon's General Problem Solver

1957: Grice's 'Meaning' [info]

1957: IBM introduces 5Mb harddrive (305 RAMAC) [cite] can store 2500 pages of text

1957: Mar: Fred Kort uses factor-analysis to predict Supreme Court decisions [rcl]

1957: RAND's IPL (Information Processing Language) [cite]

1957: RAND spins off nonprofit Systems Development Corp [cite] focused on software for SAGE [cite] larger than rest of RAND; trains 10k in compsci by 1963 [cite]

1957: RAND undertakes machine-translation project

1957: Chomsky's "Syntactic Structures"

1957: Bellman's "Dynamic Programming" (stochastic multistage decision processes)

1957: Jay Forrester founds Digital Equipment Corp (DEC)

1957: 1st Intl Conference on Classification Research [cite]

1957: Masterman uses thesaurus-categories to refine automatic translation [cite]

1957: Layman Allen's "Symbolic logic: a razor-edged tool for drafting and interpreting legal documents" [rcl]

1957: 1st issue of 'Journal of Conflict Resolution'

1957: US Patent Office uses punchcards to search pharmaceutical index [cite]

1957: Uniterm adds 'concept coordinate indexing'? [cite] used by GE on IBM 704 in 1958

1957: Univac Tape Search Writer [cite]

1957: Draper begins development of ICBM inertial-guidance system [cite]

1957: Jack Scruby launches War Game Digest [timeline]

1957: Solomonoff proposes 'inductive inference machine' to reason from specific examples to general principles [cite]

1957: Jul: start of 18-month Intl Geophysical Year (IGY) [info] incl global weather stations [cite]

1957: Sep: 1st issue of journal 'Information and Control' [tocs] [more] [most] authors will incl Shannon, GA Miller, Mandelbrot, Chomsky, Bellman

1957: 04Oct: Sputnik galvanises US scientific priorities

1958

1958: 03Feb: earliest mention of 'new math' [cite]

1958: Apr: Luhn's "Automatic creation of literature abstracts" chooses statistically uncommon words [info]

1958: ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) founded for long-range high-risk research [cite] ballistic missile defense, nuclear test detection, propellants, and materials

1958: NASA founded

1958: von Foerster's Biological Computer Lab (BCL) [bib]

1958: Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (CPEMC)

1958: von Neumann's posthumous "The Computer and the Brain"

"When we talk mathematics we may be discussing a secondary language, built on the primary language truly used by the central nervous system"

1958: Forrester's systems-dynamics study of GE factories [cite]

"a system in which the flows of information, materials, manpower, capital equipment, and money set up forces that determine the basic tendencies toward growth, fluctuation, and decline"

1958: Perry and Kent's "Tools for Machine Literature Searching" [cite]

1958: US Patent Office's HAYSTAQ (HAve You STored Answers to Questions) for indexing chemical literature [cite]

1958: Film Library Instantaneous Presentation (FLIP) searches microfilm at 600 frames/sec [cite]

1958: Luhn and Ohlman's Keyword in Context (KWIC) indexes [cite]

1958: DuPont explores Uniterm for chemical thesaurus [history] evolves into Chemical Engineering Thesaurus by 1961 [cite]

1958: Nov: Lucien Mehl proposes 'consultation or judgment machine' for lawyers [rcl]

1958: Nov: IBM's 9900 Special Index Analyzer [cite]

1958: Naval War College's computerized Navy Electronic Warfare Simulator (NEWS) doesn't actually work [cite]

1958: Avalon Hill publishes 1st modern military board games [timeline] [history] [tribute]

1958: EDVAC gets FPU [cite]

1958: Ashby's "Introduction to Cybernetics"

1958: 25Mar: 1st fly-by-wire aircraft [cite]

1958: Jul: Harvard Business Review discusses adapting wargaming techniques to developing business strategy [cite]

1958: Eshkol and Wachman's 'Movement Notation' for dance [info]

1958: SAGE becomes operational, uses CRT displays and lightpens [cite] (ultimate cost $10B)

no-date: CRTs generate vector-graphics using 'display list' of primitive objects (points, lines, curves) [info]

1958: Stanford Studies in the Mathematical Theory of Inventory and Production (Arrow et al) [history] applies Keynesian analysis to inventories

1958: International Conference on Scientific Information

1958: Nov: Garfield proposes "Unified Index to Science" [cite]

1958: Nov: McCarthy proposes 'Advice Taker' which morphs into LISP [cite]

1958: Dec: McCarthy's "Programs with Common Sense" [etext]

"Interesting changes in behavior must be expressible in a simple way... In order for a program to be capable of learning something it must first be capable of being told it."

1959

1959: Mar: Mooers' article "The Next Twenty Years in Information Retrieval: Some Goals and Predictions" [etext]

"After the statistical approach has segregated words of high import from the text, we need to translate these words into the standardized descriptor terminology for further retrieval."

[Someday we may command] "Provide me with an 800-word article, not requiring more than an undergraduate chemistry background, on the deterioration of polyisomers by sunlight."

1959: Minsky and McCarthy establish MIT AI Lab

1959: Frank Rosenblatt introduces Perceptrons

1959: Samuel's checkers program

1959: Baran proposes packet-switching

1959: IBM's batch-retrieval system for Strategic Air Command [cite]

1959: RAND publishes "Strategy in the Missile Age"

1959: Crowder's teaching-machine inserts extra lessons in response to errors [crit]

1959: Computer Control Company's Index Searcher for magnetic tape [cite]

1959: computer-control of chemical plants demonstrated [cite]

1959? Project Mercury analog flight simulator for NASA astronaut training [info]

1959: Garfield's "The relationship between mechanical indexing, structural linguistics and information retrieval" [etext]

1959: Electronic Recording Method of Accounting (ERMA, computer-readable bank-checks)

1959: Sep: attempt to improve on Memex, named 'Synthex' [cite] Synthesis of Complex Verbal Material [cite]

Studying cognitive processes by synthesizing them on computers seems to offer some hope that eventually we may come to understand enough about the difference between organisms and machines that a question about consciousness may be asked. [cite]

1959: Nov: Society for Computer Simulation International (SCS) (formerly the Simulation Councils, then Society for Computer Simulation)

1960

1960: Will Wright born in Atlanta [bio]

1960: GE's Mark I Information Retrieval Service [cite]

1960: GE's Findafact 2510 searches magnetic tape [cite]

1960: 1st Xerox machine

1960: Hoare's quicksort algorithm [cite]

1960: Reed-Solomon error-correcting code [cite]

1960: summer: automatic retrieval for legal research demonstrated, using both full-text and keyword-digests [rcl]

1960: Naur extends Backus's syntax-notation to BNF (Backus-Naur Form) [info]

1960: Clough's Finite Element Method for fluid dynamics [cite]

1960: Laerdal creates Resusci Anne mannequin for mouth-to-mouth training [info]

1960: Miller, Galanter, and Pribram's "Plans and the Structure of Behavior" [crit]

1960: Freudenthal's 'Lincos' (Lingua cosmica, language for cosmic intercourse) [info]

1960: 24Nov: Raymond Queneau et al. found Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle (Oulipo, Workshop for Potential Literature; for text experimentation) [info]

1960: US Air Force automated translator has 70k-word Russian vocabulary [cite] (sentence-analyzer added 1962: cite)

1960: Bar-Hillel's "Demonstration of the Nonfeasibility of Fully Automatic High-Quality Translation" deflates dreams of easy machine translation [info] points out that (impractical) 'universal encyclopedia' will be prerequisite

1960: 1st laser

1960: Wigner's "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences"

1960: Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences (Arrow et al) [history]

1960? SDC's Semi-automatic Information Retrieval (SATIRE) [cite]

1960: Princeton's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) and National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) founded

1960: JFK chooses Robert McNamara for Sec of Defense

1960: McNamara, impressed by RAND's "Economics of Defense in the Nuclear Age", hires 'happy little hotdogs' incl Charles Hitch, Harry Rowen, Alain Enthoven (Office of Systems Analysis), and Bill Kaufmann [cite] implements RAND's Planning-Programming-Budgeting System (PPBS) [crit]

used measures like "maximum enemy harm inflicted per dollar spent"; rated biz-school training far above military experience

1960: RAND starts Johnniac Open Shop System (JOSS) [cite]

gradual progress in fluid dynamics [history]

1961

1961: Forrester's 'Industrial Dynamics' describes 1st and 3rd order delays [cite] [info]

no-date: simulation of dams' effect on river-basins

1961: historical monograph "Electronic Computers within the Ordnance Corps" [etext]

"Almost every commodity industry such as oil, steel, and rubber is utilizing computing equipment for both scientific and commercial applications. Service industries, such as banking, transportation, and insurance have applied large scale computing systems toward the solution of problems in the fields of accounting, reservations control, and bookkeeping. Manufacturers have used computing systems for design engineering and scientific research. Many systems are being utilized for inventory and stock control. The determination of manufacturing plant location and stock parts storage are being made by linear programming methods. Electronic computers are used by the construction industry for design and location of structures and road nets. Many digital computers form a part of closed loop industrial process control systems."

1961: strategy game 'Diplomacy' by Allen Calhammer [timeline] [essay]

1961: Slug Russell's 'Space War' (1st computer-game)

1961: Layman Allen's logic-game "Wff'n'Proof" [info]

1961: Kalikow's 450-keyword indexing system for patent research [rcl]

1961: SRI's perceptron, MINOS [cite]

1961: Masterman's semantic net w/100 primitive concept types (Folk, Stuff, Thing, Do, Be) [cite]

1961: Daniel Ellsberg hired by RAND; PhD thesis "Risk, Ambiguity, and Decision"; visits Vietnam; learns missile-gap is disinfo [cite]

1961: Ceccato's "Linguistic analysis and programming for mechanical translation" (correlational net primitives; 56 relations) [bio] [history] member-class, species-genus, part-whole, object, instrument, result, containing, covering, contiguity, constellation [cite] [more]

1961: Research Analysis Corporation (RAC) begins development of US Army's 'Atlas' computer model for European war [cite] [info] boils everything down to one 'firepower score' (weighted sum of all combat systems)

1961: Collilla and Sams' b-trees [cite]

1961: question-answerer 'Baseball' [cite]

1961: IBM's Report Program Generator (RPG) [cite]

1961: IBM's Stretch supercomputers used for nuclear weapons research [cite]

1961: Sumlock's Anita 1st electronic calculator [history]

1961: Edmund Leach "Rethinking Anthropology" (1962?)

1961: development of Simula begun [history] [timeline]

1961: 27Sep: IBM releases Gordon's block-based General Purpose Systems Simulator (GPSS) [cite] [history] FAA simulates weather-bulletin transmission

block-types: originate, generate, call, advance, branch, seize, release, hold, interrupt, preempt, return, enter, leave, store, queue, split, match, assign, mark, tabulate, tag, transfer, gate, write, terminate [theory]

1961? US Army's Strategy and Tactics Analysis Group (STAG) (theater-level wargaming) [info]

1960s: GE innovates activity-based costing (ABC) [info]

term 'software' comes into use [cite]

1962

1962: Chomsky's transformational generative grammar [cite]

1962: Iverson's APL optimised for matrix math

1962: Stanford Studies in Applied Probability and Management Science (Arrow et al) [history]

1962: ARPA starts Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) under JCR Licklider [cite]

1962: 1st industrial robots

1962: Bezier curves [history]

1962: Uniterm Index to US Chemical Patents distributed on tape [cite]

1962: full-text legal-info retrieval system at Pittsburgh [cite]

1962: McCarthy moves to Stanford, creates Stanford AI Lab in '63

1962: Zadeh innovates 'fuzzy' math [cite]

1962: Halle and Stevens' "Speech recognition: A Model and a program for research" anticipates offline-simulation theory [cite]

[paraphrase] Recognition occurs when a match is found between the phonemic input and one of the hypothetical outputs of the phoneme production system.

1962: RAND's SimScript language [cite] by Markowitz, Hausner and Karr, to simulate inventory problems

1962: Ford's Aeronutronic File Search Evaluator [cite]

1962: Thesaurus of Engineering Terms [cite]

1962: 1st modem

1962: Perot founds EDS

1962: summer: 1st multi-user OS, Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) [info]

1962: Oct: Buxton and Laski's CSL (Control and Simulation Language)

1962: Oct: Doug Engelbart's "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework" predicts wordprocessing with conceptual metadata [etext] [history]

"...the entire collection of statements, sketches, computations, literature sources, and source extracts that is associated with your work would in our minds constitute a single symbol structure..."

1962-1964: Project Argon satellite photos of USSR used to construct detailed maps, inspires World Geodetic System incorporating gravitational fluctuations (1972) and Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) map coordinate system

early 1960s: software contractors incl Computer Sciences Corporation, Planning Research Corporation, Informatics, and Applied Data Research (ADR) [cite]

1963

1963: journal 'Simulation'

1963: Tocher's "Art of Simulation"

1963: 1st computer-produced conference-proceedings, for American Documentation Institute [cite]

1963: Kodak's MiraCode (Microfilm Information Retrieval Access Code) indexed microfilm for business [cite]

1963: wargamers innovate algorithm for 'infectious' negative morale [timeline]

1963: Buchla's Modular Electronic Music System [website]

1963: AT&T starts using digital switches [cite]

1963? ASCII character-set standard

1963: ZIP codes

1963: US Air Force explores character-recognition for Chinese (ChiCoder) [cite]

1963: US Navy acquires FMA Rapid Selector [cite]

1963: Minsky's "Steps Toward Artificial Intelligence"

1963: Englebart's Augment team demos remote fulltext search [cite]

1963: Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad 1st object-oriented graphics editor [info] [ideas] [constraints?]

"It was not just a tool to draw things. It was a program that obeyed laws that you wanted to be held true." --Alan Kay [cite]

"It allowed users to define and draw new shapes by specifying and applying constraints to standard shapes chosen from a pallette. This system included point constraints, linkage constraints, and angular constraints and solved these constraints through an interactive relaxation technique. A user viewed an animated sequence of the constraint solution as it forced the object to transform to a desired shape." [cite]

1963: Quillian extends groundwork for semantic nets

1963: ARPA gives $2 million grant to MIT AI Lab

1963: Project Gemini analog/digital flight simulator [info]

1963: Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System (MEDLARS)

1963: Lorenz discovers chaotic behavior of atmosphere-model [passim]

1964

1964: Bobrow's "Student" solves math word-problems

1964: Napoleonic wargame innovates historically accurate rules [timeline]

1964: Feb: Simula's 'process' concept emerges after multiple stacks added to Algol [cite] will be renamed 'object'

process-object states and facilities: Active, Suspended, Passive, Terminated; Activate, Reactivate, Hold, Passivate, Cancel, Wait

1964: Mar: workshop on Simulation Languages at Stanford [cite]

1964: Knuth and McNeley's SOL (symbolic language for general purpose system simulation) [cite]

1964: IBM's $30M SABRE system for airline reservations (evolved from SAGE) [cite] [more]

1964: Experimental Chemical Registry System assigns unique number to each new substance [cite]

1964: US Air Force's Mark II Russian Language Translator [cite]

1964: US Army Systems Research Group's "The Tank Weapon System" [info] mathematical analysis of optimal tank design (includes attrition rates varying over time; data from psych experiments)

1964: ADR creates semi-automated flowcharting app 'AutoFlow' for RCA [history]

1964: McNamara's Vietnam strategy based on graphs of bodycounts, observed enemy activity, weapons captured, etc (overlooks morale?)

1964: Jul: Ellsberg moves from RAND to Pentagon [cite]

1964: Federal Council for Science and Technology, Committee on Scientific and Technical Information (COSATI) subject classification (22 categories) (or Taube 1950? cite)

1964: Hoppenfeld's Law Research Service offers computer search of 1M case-abstracts [cite]

1964: Koestler's "Act of Creation" (creativity as bisociation)

1964: Slamecka and Taube's "Theoretical principles of information organization in librarianship"

1964: Mooers' TRAC (Text Reckoning And Compiling) text-handling language [info]

1964: Arthur Samuel predicts libraries will be unnecessary by 1984 [cite]

1960s: Patent Office's unsuccessful 'Project Potomac' for automated search [cite]

no-date: ILAS (Interrelated Logic Accumulating Scanner: info), RAMP (Random Access Mechanization of Phosphorus Compounds), CAMP (Card Mechanization of Phosphorus), SECIR (Semiautomatic Encoding of Chemistry for Information Retrieval) , CASSIS, and CSIR [cite]

1965

1965? general purpose inventory-forecasting apps innovate biz-software market [cite]

1965: Feigenbaum takes over SAIL; Noftsker takes over MIT AI Lab

1965: Feigenbaum and Lederberg begin DENDRAL expert system project (molecular-structure analysis)

1965: Bliss's Semantography or Blissymbolics (iconic language) [info]

1965: Perreault's "Categories and relators: a new schema" (modifies UDC)

1965? Parker-Rhodes' interlingua based on NUDE (150 primitives) [info]

1965: 1st wide-area network between MIT and Santa Monica

1965: Chemical Notation Association founded

1965: discovery of cosmic microwave background

1965: Apr: US Air Force's multifont print reader [cite]

1965: SDC's Synthex handles natural-language queries to Golden Book Encyclopedia [cite]

What do policemen do?
Describe a cat.
Name four small animals with long tails.

1965: wargamers introduce algorithm for positive morale [timeline]

1965: Dreyfus at RAND writes "Alchemy and AI"

1965: Cooley and Tukey's fast Fourier transform [cite]

1965: LBJ implements RAND's Planning-Programming-Budgeting System (PPBS) thruout executive branch [cite]

design and testing of systems for health insurance, school vouchers, rent control, housing allowances, transportation, water supply and communications systems

"most of the planning problems of most of the civilian departments, like those of higher education, were far different from those military planning problems which had proved susceptible to systems analysis."

Urban Institute was modeled after RAND and headed by RAND and Defense Department alumnus William Gorham. The Office of Economic Opportunity's Research, Program Planning and Evaluation Office was run by a succession of RAND alumni. [cite]

1965: autumn: Berkeley students choose the punchcard as image of oppression [history]

mid-1960s: Smagorinsky and Manabe's general circulation model (GCM) tested with 'doubled-CO2' benchmark [cite]

1966

1966: computer-related IPO boom [cite]

1966: Sutherland and Sproull's VR w/headmounted display

1966: Weizenbaum creates ELIZA [info] [Javascript] "Why do you think I don't argue with you?"

1966? development of Project Apollo flight simulators begins [info]

1966: Naddor's "Dimensions in Operations Research" [info]

1966: Jul: US Air Force experiments with speech compression [cite]

1966: System Development Corporation demos COLEX (CIRC OnLine EXperiment) with US Air Force database of Russian tech-literature [cite]

1966: SRI's robot, Shakey [cite]

1966: Nov: Automatic Language Processing Advisory Committee (ALPAC) report "Languages and machines: computers in translation and linguistics" kills funding for machine translation [account] focuses exclusively on US govt translation of Russian documents, concludes humans are cost-effective at less than 6c/word (post-editing often slower than direct translation); more than $10M had been spent so far by US govt

systems tested: Bunker-Ramo; Computer Concepts; USAF Foreign Technology Division; Euratom

1966: Simula is 1st object-oriented programming language

1966: Alan Kay reads Sketchpad-thesis and Simula-docs while getting PhD at Utah under Evans [cite] [cite] [history]

"I suddenly realized that Simula was a programming language to do what Sketchpad did. I had never really understood what Sketchpad was. I get shivers now thinking of it. It rotated my point of view through a different dimension and nothing has been the same since. I suddenly understood the purpose of higher level languages."

1966: 1st role-playing game uses WW2 setting [timeline]

1966: Nov: Library of Congress's Project MARC (MAchine-Readable Cataloging) [cite]

1967

1967? Ken Thompson adds regexps to QED [history] (generalised representation of string-patterns)

1967: Apr: Masterman's boolean analysis of Catholic 'Trinity' [info]

1967: Boole & Babbage's Problem Program Evaluator [cite] later Configuration Utilization Evaluator

1967: Informatics' Mark IV database ($30k each, will dominate software world until 1983) [cite]

1967: Greenblatt's MacHack defeats Hubert Dreyfus at chess

1967: RAND statistical models predict the number and skill mix of aircraft mechanics required for unscheduled maintenance [cite]

1967: Kahn and Wiener's "Toward the Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation" innovates use of 'scenarios'

1967: Bertin's "Semiologie Graphique"

1967: 1st heart pacemaker

1967: May: Simula-67 renames activities and processes as classes and objects [cite] [intro]

1967: Jef Raskin's thesis "A Hardware-Independent Computer Drawing System Using List-Structured Modeling: The Quick-Draw Graphics System" [info]

1967: Sep: Tunnicliffe [obit] proposes separation of formatting from document-content? [history]

1967: Nicholas Negroponte starts Architecture Machine Group (ArchMac) at MIT (morphs into Media Lab by 1985) [info] to create tools for collaboration between designer and computer

1967: Nov: Conference on Application of Simulation using GPSS [cite]

1968

1968: Evans and Sutherland founded to build graphical simulations [history] [more]

1968: Peter Toma starts Systran software project [timeline] [info]

1968: GE 1st nuclear power-plant simulator [cite]

1968: GPE (flight sims) merges with Singer [cite]

1968: Forrester's "Principles of Systems"

1968: Grice's "Utterer's Meaning, Sentence Meaning, and Word-Meaning" [info]

1968: SRI's 'A*' algorithm for Shakey's pathfinding [cite] [crit]

1968: Van de Waal's Iconclass for indexing art [info]

Abstract, Non-representational Art; Religion and Magic; Nature; Human being, Man in general; Society, Civilization, Culture; Abstract Ideas and Concepts; History; Bible; Literature; Classical Mythology and Ancient History [info]

1968: Apr: JCR Licklider and Robert Taylor's "The Computer as a Communication Device" [history]

1968: Kubrick's "2001" introduces AI to mass audience

1968: 09Dec: Doug Englebart demos "Augment/NLS" hypertext-editing sys (w/tiled windows?) [RealVid] [history] Alan Kay is present

"In Augment two windows can show two aspects of the same object. A change to an object via either window may be seen thru both windows." [cite]

1968: Dec: 2nd Conference on Application of Simulation using GPSS [cite] 700 attendees

1969

1969: 15Jan: US Air Force starts using 'Basic Systran' to translate Russian [cite]

1969: Alan Kay and Edward Cheadle design Flex system [cite] windows (non-overlapping?), tablet for input

1969: Minsky & Papert's "Perceptrons" kills funding for neural net research

1969: IBM unbundles software and hardware

1969: Schelling's "Models of Segregation" at RAND (cellular automata model) [info] [French site]

1969: crude anesthesia simulator flops [info]

1969: ISBN established by the International Organization for Standardization

1969: STanford Research Institute Problem Solver (STRIPS) for Shakey [cite]

1969: Apollo Lunar Module uses fly-by-wire [cite]

1969: Joel Moses writes MacSyma in Lisp (symbolic-math representation) [cite]

1969: Forrester's "Urban Dynamics" inspired by discussions with ex-mayor of Boston plots 250yr lifecycles of cities [cite] predicts you have to break systems to fix them

"The barrier is deficiency in the existing theories of structure... Within the same system we must admit the interactions of the psychological, the economic, the technical, the cultural, and the political."

1969: 1st Summer Computer Simulation Conference

1969: G Spencer Brown's "Laws of Form" (boolean arithmetic) [info]

[pic source]

1969: IBM asks Charles Goldfarb to implement database of legal documents; need for standard markup leads to Goldfarb-Mosher-Lorie Generalized Markup Language (GML) [cite]

1969: Beyster founds Science Applications International Corp (SAIC; spy software) [history]

1969: Buckminster Fuller launches utopian 'World Game' [info]

1969: Vector Research Inc founded by Seth Bonder to model tank battles for US Army (1st hybrid analytic/simulation model) [info]

"analytically described all attrition processes and simulated terrain line-of-sight via deterministic map, movement of system groups via attack routes, and command control via tactical decision rules"

1969: Jim Dunnigan founds Poultron Press (later Simulations Publications Inc-- SPI) to take over publishing 'Strategy and Tactics' magazine [history] [timeline]

1969: ARPAnet

1969: 1st 'RFC' (Request for Comments)

next: page four up: intro
page one: start 10000BC 1000BC 500BC 250BC 0 500 1000 1300 1500
page two: 1600 1700 1800 1830 1860 1880 1900 1910 1920 1930
this page: 1942 1946 1950 1954 1957 1959 1961 1964 1967
page four: 1970 1973 1977 1981 1985 1989 1992 1994 1996 1999

[rcl] = Reed C Lawlor "Information Technology and the Law" in Advances in Computers 1962 yearbook

Lehmann's ontologies

Bateman's portal

IT timelines

Greenspun MIT

Columbia

Phasor pdfs

Computational linguistics: SWan

classification schemes

databases

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