Les Machines à  ¬ Calculer by Couffignal (2 results)

Soft cover. Condition: Very Good. **Perhaps the Earliest AI Conference? The Birthpace of AI? (Ref IEEE Spectrum online) "The most important early European conference on computer science"--Herbert Bruderer (Communications ACM blog on AI, 2017)** [Colloques Internationaux,] First edition, published in Paris, 1953, 570pp. Wrappers. VG, solid copy binding very tight and strong given the binding and the weight of the book. [++] This is a conference proceeding (the brainchild so to speak of Louis Couffignal and organized by the Centre Blaise Pascal) that is seen by some as the first conference held on "artificial intelligence"--not only did the distinguished and groundbreaking assembly of 268 leaders from 10 countries in the fields of computation, intelligence, and cognition present papers on computers as brains but also on brains as computers. [++] "How in the end should we think about Couffignal s 1951 conference? What do we make of it? In a 2017 piece, the computer scientist turned computing historian Herbert Bruderer considers whether the conference marked the birthplace of artificial intelligence, rather than the more famous Dartmouth Conference of 1956. [That's the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, referred to as the Constitutional Convention of AI, and organized by Claude Shannon, John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, and Nathaniel Rochester]. He writes, This well-documented event could also be regarded as the first major conference of artificial intelligence. --IEEE Spectrum, "Cybernetics, Computer Design, and a Meeting of the Minds" [online]. In the Communications of the ACM blog on AI Bruderer writes that this was the most important European conference on computer science. [++] The conference was organized in three sections: Premiere section, "Progress recents dans la technique des grosses machines a calculer"; Deuxieme section, "Problemes de mathematiques et de sciences appliquees relevant des grosses machines"; Troisieme section, "Les grosses machines, la logique et la physiologie du systeme nerveux". [++] Contributors include Warren McCulloch (with Walter Pitts, and others) writing on "nervous nets" (neural nets) in his "Une comparaison entre les machines a calculer et la cerveau" (brain); F.M. Colebrook on the Pilot Model of Alan Turing's stored program Automatic Computiong Engine, "Le Modele Pilotte du Calculateur Automatique Electronique Arithmetique (ACE) du N.P.L.; Howard Aiken (writing on the Mark IV); Louis de Broglie; Andrew Booth (writing on the SEC); Eduard Stiefel (of the ETH) writing on Zuse's Z-4; Maurice Wilkes and Douglas Hartree on the EDSAC; W. Ross Ashby (on the homeostat, a device he built in 1948 and presented at the Macy meeting in 1952, it was perhaps the first machine capable of adjusting itself to its environment); N. Wiener ("Les machines a calculer et la Forme (Gestalt)); A.D. Booth, "La Machine a calculer electromagnetique"; E,W, Cannon on the computer at the U.S. National Bureau of Standards; W. Grey Walter "Realisations mecanique de modeles de structures cerebrales; repsentation d'animaux artificiels" (being his famous cybernetic tortoises); L. Delpech "Perspectives Psychologiques et Machines a Reasonner"; and others. Also there is a longish presentation by Couffignal on his "machine-pilote I.P.B." (There is also a strong appearance by Louis Lapicque (d. 1952) on the computational neurosciences/machine/mind mind/brain computing area.) Also of special interest is a long section (pp 361-383) on the chess-playing machine of Torres Quevedo presented by his son, including several interesting diagrams and schematics. Also: rounding all of this marvelous material out is Couffignal, ending the meeting with "Quelques analogues nouvelles entre les structures de machines a calculer et les structures cerebrales". There's a LOT to unpack here.

1st Edition. Full volume. FIRST EDITION OF VALTAT'S DESCRIPTION OF HIS PATENTED CALCULATING MACHINE FOUNDED ON THE CONVERSION OF DECIMAL INPUT INTO BINARY INPUT PRIOR TO CALCULATION. Valtat here notes "that binary digits could be represented either mechanically or electrically. He also stated that in an electric circuit the switch "on" would equal 1 and the switch "off" would equal 0" (Jeremy Norman, History of Science). As noted below, some instead credit Louis Couffignal who in 1936 and in this same volume, wrote of employing binary notation in a calculating machine. Couffignal "argues the utility of representing numbers by binary notation in computers and discusses the design of electrical calculators" (Aiken, Proposed Automatic Calculating Machines, 10). A Frenchman, Raymond Valtat (1898-1986) patented his calculator in 1932, but this 1936 paper is his first written account of his invention. In this paper, Valtat finally explains his thought and methodology, strongly advocating for the usage of the binary system in calculating apparatus over that of the decimal system. The scholarship on the invention of the first binary-based calculating machine is confusing. The discovery is sometimes credited to Claude Shannon's master's thesis published in 1938 but written in 1937. Some credit Konrad Zuse who working in Germany, applied for a patent on a binary calculating machine in 1936. Others credit Louis Couffignal who in 1936 also wrote of employing binary notation in a calculating machine. Valtat, however, "may have been the first to propose a binary-based calculating machine" - this because though he did not publish until 1936, he applied for his patent in 1932, thus predating both Zuse and Shannon (Norman; Ptak). Randell 1982a, 519-20. Origins of Cyberspace 397. CONDITION & DETAILS: Complete volume. Ex-libris stamp on the rear of the first page; slight ghosting at the spine where a spine level has been removed. Illustrated throughout, including the Pouillet paper. 4to (11 x 8 inches; 275 x 200mm). Continuously paginated: pp. 1225-2331. Full blue cloth binding, gilt-lettered at the spine; ghosting from the removal of a label at the spine; stamp on the rear of the title page.