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From: g-rh@cca.UUCP (Richard Harter)
Newsgroups: net.cse
Subject: Re: Role of computer science (was !Tom)
Message-ID: <10332@cca.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 30-Sep-86 22:31:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: cca.10332
Posted: Tue Sep 30 22:31:20 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 2-Oct-86 21:32:14 EDT
References: <699@sdcc12.UUCP> <10202@cca.UUCP> <1729@mcc-pp.UUCP>
Reply-To: g-rh@cca.UUCP (Richard Harter)
Organization: Computer Corp. of America, Cambridge
Lines: 34

In article <> edwards@uwmacc.UUCP (mark edwards) writes:
>
>    I believe the roots of Lambda Calculus can be traced farther back
> then that. People like liebnitz (sp ?) and others from the 12th -14th
> century. And the notion of artificial intelligence to the same period
> by I think Raoul (sp ?). One of my prof's showed my Computational
> Linguistics Class a reference in Latin from a book from that period.
> The words Artificial Intelligence were clearly distinguishable, even
> though it was Latin.

Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz, 1646-1716.  Coinventor (with Newton)
of Calculus.  He created a calculating machine (an improvement of
Pascal's).  Leibniz conceived of a universal calculus of logic --
it did not get very far, because the technical foundations did not
exist.

There was also a spaniard who had a logical wheel, resembling a
circular slide rule.  It had multiple disks, with each disk divided
into categories.  He was trying to create a universal reasoning machine.
The date, however, was in the 1500s as I recall (I can't lay my hand on
a reference at the moment.)

The idea of a thinking machine is much older, but these were on the
lines of Golems or robots and tended to be magical in character.

I think it is fair to say that nothing that is now central to
computer science was done before the nineteenth century, with the
exception of numerical analysis.  


-- 

Richard Harter, SMDS Inc. [Disclaimers not permitted by company policy.]
	For Cheryl :-)