computing and Artificial intelligence

Containing more than 300 documents, the Analog Computing portion of the collection begins with Dennis Henrion’s 1618 description of Galileo’s “Proportional Compass” and continues through documents describing the differential analyzers and other analog computing devices developed in the late 1940s.

Automata is a small (~30 document) collection containing works about self-operating machines, such as robots. This collection is comprised of scientific documents as well as fiction. The collection begins with contemporary descriptions of early automata like Vaucanson’s “Fluteur Automate” and Baron Kempelen's “The Turk”. It continues with Karel Čapek’s RUR (the originator of the term “Robot”) and Asimov’s “I Robot” stories in their original pulp printings, on to Vonnegut’s “Piano Player,” and Von Neuman’s “Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata.” 

Consisting of approximately 440 documents, Digital Computing primarily contains papers by computer pioneers describing early digital computers. It also chronicles an array of enabling technologies and important communications documents. Digital Computing begins with the 1720 Paris edition of the Histoire et Mémoires containing Leibniz’ introduction of binary arithmetic, and focuses on documents describing the most important first- and second-generation digital developments in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as important later developments through the early 2000s.  The collection also includes original copies of several important digital computing patents.

This collection includes nearly 200 works, primarily scientific documents about the early development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), but also documents describing concerns about its dangers.

The works on AI begin with the proceedings of the first AI conference in 1951, include a number of works by Alan Turing and Claude Shannon, the first mention and several in-depth explorations of “The Singularity” (the point at which artificial intelligence exceeds mankind’s brainpower), and culminates with recent AI concerns expressed in Nick Bostrom’s “Superintelligence” and Brian Christian’s “The Alignment Problem.”

This collection also contains approximately 75 documents that do not perfectly fall into one of the above categories. These include the collected papers of prominent scientists and documents that depict the histories and theories of computing.