Giant brains; or, Machines that think

by Edmund Callis Berkeley

Automatic Library

We can foresee the development of machinery that will make it possible to consult information in a library automatically. Suppose that you go into the library of the future and wish to look up ways for making biscuits. You will be able to dial into the catalogue machine “making biscuits.” There will be a flutter of movie film in the machine. Soon it will stop, and, in front of you on the screen, will be projected the part of the catalogue which shows the names of three or four books containing recipes for biscuits. If you are satisfied, you will press a button; a copy of what you saw will be made for you and come out of the machine.

After further development, all the pages of all books will be available by machine. Then, when you press the right button, you will be able to get from the machine a copy of the exact recipe for biscuits that you choose.

We are not yet at the end of foreseeable development. There will be a third stage. You will then have in your home an automatic cooking machine operated by program tapes. You will stock it with various supplies, and it will put together and cook whatever dishes you desire. Then, what you will need from the library will be a program or routine on magnetic tape to control your automatic cook. And the library, instead of producing a pictorial copy of the recipe for you to read and apply, will produce a routine on magnetic tape for controlling your cooking machine so that you will actually get excellent biscuits!

Of course, you may have other kinds of automatic producing machinery in your home or office. The furnishing of routines to control automatic machinery will become a business of importance.

Automatic Translator

Another machine that we can foresee would be used for translating from one language to any other. We can call it an automatic translator. Suppose that you want to say “How much?” in Swedish. You dial into the machine “How much?” and press the button “Swedish,” and the machine will promptly write out “Hur mycket?” for you. It also will pronounce it, if you wish, for there would be little difficulty in recording on magnetic tape the pronunciation of the word as spoken by a good speaker of the language. The machine could be set to repeat the pronunciation several times so that the student could really learn the sound. He could learn it better, probably, by hearing it and trying to say it than he could by using any set of written symbols.

Automatic Typist

We now come to a possible machine that uses a new principle. This principle is that of being able to recognize signs. This machine would perceive writing on a piece of paper and recognize that all the a’s that appear on the paper are cases of a, and that all the b’s that appear on it are instances of b, and so forth. The machine could then control an electric typewriter and copy the marks that it sees. The first stage of this machine would be one in which only printed characters of a high degree of likeness could be recognized. In later stages, handwriting, even rather illegible handwriting, might be recognizable by the machine. We can call it an automatic typist.

The elements of the automatic typist would be the following: