Advent of Computing

Explore the significance of the LGP30 computer and its creator in the development of the Monte Carlo method. Learn about the origins and applications of the method, including its connection to Los Alamos and genetic algorithms. Discover the challenges faced in running quantitative models on the INIAC machine. Delve into the Monte Carlo method for simulating fission events and its simplicity. Finally, explore the history of the method, from its origins in Los Alamos to its application in the casino industry.

I will admit, the title here is a bit of click bait. In the early 1950s a researcher named Nils Aall Barricelli started in on a bold project. His goal was to simulate evolution on a computer and, in doing so, create a perfect lab to study evolutionary processes. What he found was astonishing. Given a simple rule set these interesting patterns emerged. He called them symbioorganisms. Despite being simple numeric constructs, they exhibited many properties of living things. Did Barricelli create a digital form of life? Selected Sources: https://sci-hub.se/10.1007/BF01556771 - Numerical Testing of Evolution Theories. Please, just read this paper and be amazed!

This episode is simply a reading of the Story of Mel. I opened last episode with an excerpt, but didn't feel right leaving it at that. So, I present, the Story of Mel as written by Ed Nather and preserved in the Jargon file.

In 1956 Librascope released the LGP-30, a truly wild machine. It was, for the time, the most simple and cheap machine that could actually be useful. It was the size of a desk when contemporary machines took up small rooms. It plugged into a normal wall outlet while other machines requires special power feeds. It was, perhaps, the first hint of a personal computer. And at its heart was a magnetic drum that only a true programmer could love.   Selected Sources:   http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html - The Story of Mel   https://sci-hub.se/10.1109/TEC.1957.5221555 - Frankel's MINAC Paper   http://www.hp9825.com/html/stan_frankel.html - A Biography of Frankel

I'm wrapping up my dive into Prolog with... Prolog itself! This episode I'm actually covering the development of Prolog, using all the natural language processing lore we covered last time. Along the way we will see how Prolog developed from a set of tools, and how those tools were generalized into a useful language. Selected Sources: http://alain.colmerauer.free.fr/alcol/ArchivesPublications/PrologHistory/19november92.pdf - The Birth of Prolog https://archive.org/details/introductiontoma0000hutc/mode/1up?q=%22q-systems%22&view=theater - An Introduction to Machine Translation

I've been told I need to do an episode about Prolog. Well, here's the start of that process. To talk about Prolog we first need to come to grips with natural language processing, it's tools, and it's languages. This episode we are doing just that, going from ELIZA to Planner ro SHRDLU in an attempt to figure out how AI was first taught human tongues, where smoke and mirrors end, and where facinting programming begins.   Selected Sources:   https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/365153.365168 - ELIZA   https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:cm792pj8606/cm792pj8606.pdf - Planner   https://web.archive.org/web/20200725084321/http://hci.stanford.edu/~winograd/shrdlu/AITR-235.pdf - SHRDLU

Space is cool, in all meanings of the word. Not only is it wondrous, vast, and fascinating, it can also be a cold place. It's also a very useful place to put things. This episode we are looking at the first practical use of space: communication satellites.   Selected Source:   https://archive.org/details/BigBounc1960 - The Big Bounce   https://archive.org/details/dtic-ada-141865-ieee-centenial-journal-1984-ocr/page/n67/mode/2up - A Signal Corp Space Opera   https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4308/ch6.htm - The Odyssey of Project Echo

I don't usually cover video games. When I do, you know it's for a weird reason. This episode we are looking at the Atari VCS 2600, it's strange hardware, and how it fits into the larger story of the rise of microprocessors. These new tiny chips were already changing the world, but they brought along their own problems. Selected source: https://spectrum.ieee.org/atari-2600 - Inventing the Atari 2600 https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2012/09/102658257-05-01-acc.pdf - Al Alcorn Oral History https://www.digitpress.com/library/interviews/interview_bob_whitehead.html - Bob Whitehead Interview

What really is the deal with microcontrollers? Are they just little computers... or are they something totally different? This episode we are looking at the development of the microcontroller through the history of the TMS1000.      

This episode we pick back up where we left off. We are looking at the roots of the Mundaneum, the applications of the Universal Decimal Code, and how it call connects to hypertext. Selected Sources: https://web.archive.org/web/20051227184732/http://people.lis.uiuc.edu/~wrayward/otlet/xanadu.htm - Visions of Xanadu https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/items/4184 -- Selected Essays of Paul Otlet