THINKING MACHINE

Hokitika Guardian, 30 January 1928, Page 4

THINKING MACHINE

REMARKABLE INDENTION

LONDON, Dec. G

An eleefrieal thinking machine that solves problems too complex for the human brain has jm>t been perfected by Dr A’annevar Bush, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “ I he device,” claims Dr Bush, ‘‘opens fields of research ’hitherto inaccessible. “The Intergraph” may be called an adding machine carried to the extreme in design. AVhere workers in the business world are usually satisfied with a machine that does addition, subtraction and multiplication, the “Intergraph” deals with curves and graphs which represent the past, present and future. Tho apparatus requires from eight minutes to an hour to make computations which would occupy the most experienced mathematician anything from a month to a year to work out by ordinary known methods. T-ht foundation of tho apparatus is a watt-hour meter. Ihe mathematician takes the equations in which ho interested and “plots” them on sheets of paper. There sheets are then passed under pointers and the operator of .the machine keeps the pointers on the curves. As the pointers move the power flowing through 'the meter varies in proportion. The motor controls a motor which drives a pencil on another sheet of paper, tracing a. curve which is called the integral and which is the result desired.