
Frolicsome Engines: The Long Prehistory of Artificial Intelligence - modernerd
http://publicdomainreview.org/2016/05/04/frolicsome-engines-the-long-prehistory-of-artificial-intelligence/
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benbreen
I thought this was a fantastic article. I've been intrigued for awhile by the
interplay between automata, mechanical looms and early computational devices
that she writes about here. Great example of how seemingly trivial or toy-like
inventions can end up having unforeseen consequences. It's also interesting to
think about how the history of magic and the history of technology have been
entangled (by the latter I don't mean actual magic of course, but the drive to
create objects or phenomena that _appear_ magical).

"Of course, it’s an anachronism to call sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
pinned cylinders “programming” devices. To be sure, there is a continuous line
of development from these pinned cylinders to the punch cards used in
nineteenth-century automatic looms (which automated the weaving of patterned
fabrics), to the punch cards used in early computers, to a silicon chip. The
designers of the automatic loom used automata and automatic musical
instruments as their model; then Charles Babbage — the English mathematician
who designed the first mechanical computers during the 1830s, the Analytical
and Difference Engines — in turn used the automatic loom as his model. Indeed,
one might consider a pinned cylinder to be a sequence of pins and spaces, just
as a punch card is a sequence of holes and spaces, or zeroes and ones."

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dang
(We moved this comment over from a previous submission of this article.)

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mafribe
If you are interested in the history of automata, artificial creativity and
artificial intelligence, the following two are also interesting.

\- D. Summers Stay, _Machinamenta: The thousand year quest to build a creative
machine._

\- W. Zhao, _Rendering the Illusion of Life: Art, Science and Politics in
Automata from the Central European Princely Collections_.

