
Neural Network on a Commodore 64 (1987) - ingve
https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/commodore/BrainSim/
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vinw
It's pretty neat that if you run Attneave's Cat through Google Images[0] its
best guess is that it's an image of a cat.

[0] [https://www.google.com/search?tbs=sbi:AMhZZis-
EoFUya0lMH5oOq...](https://www.google.com/search?tbs=sbi:AMhZZis-
EoFUya0lMH5oOqtVXvqwwCZ3Ct5B4g8rjqcvcWOu6hfkjFh9wDH5pO0Pg7CwXO8ijR5oGPv5atV67roNQ7FfwzHIbzCP9BstA1wrptY5b6OKBAUzDR0jAUZemGvZvrJWsobqOGbjfDNAbMP8qUbGKBNoi_1t3NmbtL0eUjzG-
VAHOMsaHAhTKvH-
OK6NaPCIMcqEYVX9MOW5T5K0U3JqcHhZb3XRDcvTz2K9y7DMzY4T_1zlHPyq8RO5gapnHPgLZkVEk92fKXQv_1oTkzruH_1X2yd1ZcEgmy5TfuwpGOo0iQlcbNist-
TUSAQIC7W_1LNhoy3PzVhAUSXJyNozjSPfG02acmg&safe=active&hl=en&biw=1173&bih=716&site=search&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiylNPGj_3XAhUSyKQKHQdlBeMQ9Q8IJCgA)

~~~
supermdguy
That might partially be because it's already indexed the original page, and
noticed that its caption includes "Cat".

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briga
If you think that's cool, you might also be interested to know that Marvin
Minsky programmed a neural network all the way back in _1951_ :
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_neural_analog_rei...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_neural_analog_reinforcement_calculator)

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jeffwass
Anybody know when the term "Neural Net" first appeared?

Just read Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", published in '66, and
there are a couple of mentions of "neural nets".

~~~
briga
McColloch and Pitts and are generally credited with the theoretical
foundations of artificial neurons in the 40s, and around that time Hebb was
doing some pioneering work on activation potentials, but traces of the idea
can be found as far back as James's _Principles of Psychology_.

~~~
jeffwass
Thanks, but I mean specifically the term "neural net". Saw some older papers
mention artificial neutrons but interested when they used the term 'net'

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testvox
The primary paper by McColloch and Pitts is "A Logical Calculus of Ideas
Immanent in Nervous Activity" (1943) it doesn't use exactly the term "neural
net" but it mentions nets, networks, and "nervous nets". But it seems like the
term "nervous net" goes back to the 19th century as a description of primitive
neural arrangements in biology.

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varjag
Very cool!

I remember adapting backpropagation network code from German C't magazine to
HiSoft Pascal on ZX Spectrum. Only a few bits worth of inputs, but watching it
run and converge was fascinating.

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GlenTheMachine
Had this actually been published in a Commodore magazine it would have changed
my life - revealed a whole new area of computer science to the teenaged me,
fifteen years before I actually encountered it. Damn.

~~~
tomcam
Which means that quite possibly papers are coming out this very second with
concepts you will treasure years in the future unless you take quick action.
You need to start reading the professional literature more, Glen!

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partycoder
The 80s saw the creation of the neocognitron, self organized maps and the
first recurrent neural networks (e.g: hopfield networks, boltzmann machines).

It also saw the first application of backpropagation to neural networks.

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protomyth
People did some pretty cool things with the C64. Back when I was in college
(88-91), two professors in the Math department built an interface that hooked
up 4 C64 computers so they could run parallel stuff. I guess it was the
cheapest solution to the problem.

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walkingolof
Thats weird, you could get a (Atari 1040 STFM) 1M 8Mhz 68000 at that time for
less than those 4 C64:s

~~~
rexreed
Perhaps they already had them on hand? I have 2 C64 machines still!

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protomyth
You and matt_the_bass are right. They had 4 on hand and wanted to explore
parallelism. I think they tried to buy some transputer boards first without
success then figured they could afford the parts to build the interface. I’m
told it was pretty fun to program.

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supermdguy
> If you walk up to a computer and ask it “what is the name of the famous
> bridge in the same state as Disneyland” you won't have much success, but
> most people will immediately answer, “The Golden Gate Bridge”.

30 years later:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+name+of+the+famo...](https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+name+of+the+famous+bridge+in+the+same+state+as+Disneyland)

Look at the first result.

~~~
antoineMoPa
The golden gate bridge is the third result here, with the same link. Seems
like you can't rely on google search results to be the same from country to
country and person to person.

~~~
supermdguy
Yeah, that's definitely true

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drudru11
John Walker is awesome. Founder of Autocad and good guy to the hacker
community when he was in the Bay Area.

