Plate 0. The Question, 1943–1955
The Question
Before the field had a name, it had a question.
In 1943 a neurophysiologist and a logician described neurons as switches that compute. Seven years later Alan Turing replaced the unanswerable “can machines think?” with a game anyone could play.
The machines of the decade were rooms of glowing valves. The first “bug” was a moth taped into a logbook. Everything after this begins at a desk, at night, with a blank sheet.
Events
- McCulloch & Pitts model the neuron as logic (1943)
- The first actual bug (9 Sept 1947)
- Shannon’s maze-solving mouse (c. 1950)
- Turing asks: can machines think? (Oct 1950)