Plate I. The Summer Project, 1955–1973
Symbolic Dawn
A summer workshop names the field and promises to finish it quickly.
The 1955 Dartmouth proposal coined “artificial intelligence” and guessed that a carefully selected group could make significant progress in a summer. Programs proved theorems, played checkers, and parsed English inside tiny worlds of blocks.
Optimism was the era’s fuel. Perceptrons learned to see simple shapes, ELIZA made people confide in a script, and a robot named Shakey planned its way across a room. Predictions ran ahead of the machines.
Events
- “Artificial intelligence” is coined (31 Aug 1955)
- Logic Theorist proves theorems (1956)
- The Dartmouth summer workshop (Jun 1956 – Aug 1956)
- McCarthy designs LISP (1958)
- The Perceptron makes headlines (8 Jul 1958)
- Samuel’s checkers player learns (1959)
- “The last invention that man need ever make” (1965)
- ELIZA, the first chatbot (Jan 1966)
- Shakey the robot (1966 – 1972)
- Minsky & Papert publish Perceptrons (1969)
- “In from three to eight years…” (20 Nov 1970)
- MYCIN diagnoses infections (c. 1972)