Giant brains; or, Machines that think

by Edmund Callis Berkeley

SCHEMES FOR EXPRESSING MEANINGS

If we examine languages that have existed, we can observe a number of schemes for expressing meanings. In the table on [pp. 12-13] is a rough list of a dozen of them. From among these we can choose the schemes that are likely to be useful in mechanical brains. Schemes 11 and 12 are the schemes that have been predominantly used in machinery for computing. Scheme 12 consisting of combinations of just two marks, ✓, ✕, provides one of the best codes for mechanical handling of information. This scheme, called binary coding ([see Supplement 2]), is also useful for measuring the quantity of information.