NEW NAVY DEVICE LEARNS BY DOING
1958, The New York Times
WASHINGTON, July 7 (UPI) — The Navy revealed the embryo of an electronic computer today that it expects will be able to walk, talk, see, write, reproduce itself and be conscious of its existence.
WASHINGTON, July 7 (UPI) — The Navy revealed the embryo of an electronic computer today that it expects will be able to walk, talk, see, write, reproduce itself and be conscious of its existence.
The embryo — the Weather Bureau’s $2,000,000 “704” computer — learned to differentiate between right and left after fifty attempts in the Navy’s demonstration for newsmen.
The service said it would use this principle to build the first of its Perceptron thinking machines that will be able to read and write. It is expected to be finished in about a year at a cost of $100,000.
Dr. Frank Rosenblatt, designer of the Perceptron, conducted the demonstration. He said the machine would be the first device to think as the human brain. As do human beings, Perceptron will make mistakes at first, but will grow wiser as it gains experience, he said.
Dr. Rosenblatt, a research psychologist at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory, Buffalo, said Perceptrons might be fired to the planets as mechanical space explorers.
