Category: Timeline Stories

When in 1966, the German-American computer scientist and professor at MIT Joseph Weizenbaum (1923-2008) wrote the first chatbot, Eliza, with one variant called Doctor, modeled on simple psychotherapy, he was horrified when his secretary didn’t want him to see her conversation with the Doctor, and then, when other computer scientists suggested building clinical versions. He wrote: “What I had not realized is that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people”.

ELIZA is claimed by some to be one of the programs (perhaps the first) able to pass the Turing test. It simulated conversation by using a pattern matching and substitution methodology that gave users an illusion of understanding on the part of the program, but had no representation that could be considered really understanding what was being said by either party. The ELIZA program itself was written in MAD-SLIP, the pattern-matching directives that contained most of its language capability were provided in separate “scripts”, represented in a Lisp-like representation. The most famous script, DOCTOR, simulated a psychotherapist of the Rogerian school (in which the therapist often reflects back the patient’s words to the patient), and used rules, dictated in the script, to respond with non-directional questions to user inputs.

ELIZA is incapable of learning new patterns of speech or new words through interaction alone. Edits must be made directly to ELIZA’s active script in order to change the manner by which the program operates. ELIZA remains a milestone simply because it was the first time a programmer had attempted such a human-machine interaction with the goal of creating the illusion (however brief) of human–human interaction. Moreover, at the 1972 International Conference on Computer Communications, ELIZA was brought together with another early artificial intelligence program named PARRY (written by psychiatrist Kenneth Colby) for a computer-only conversation. While ELIZA was built to speak as a doctor, PARRY was intended to simulate a patient with schizophrenia. And the results of this chat were interesting. See how it started:
ELIZA: Good Evening. Tell me your problems. Please terminate input with a period or a question mark.
PARRY: People get on my nerves sometimes.
ELIZA: I am not sure I understand you fully.
PARRY: You should pay more attention.
ELIZA: Suppose you should pay more attention.
PARRY: You’re entitled to your own opinion.
ELIZA: What makes you think I am entitled to my own opinion?
PARRY: It bothers me just to be around people in general.
ELIZA: Please go on.
PARRY: I went to the track at Bay Meadows a while back.
ELIZA: What does that suggest to you?
PARRY: I went to the races.
ELIZA: Would you like to discuss your nerves?
PARRY: I guess so.
ELIZA: What does that suggest to you?
PARRY: What are you getting at?
ELIZA: What answer would please you most?
PARRY: It’s not a matter of like or dislike.
ELIZA: What else would you like to discuss?
PARRY: I am getting tired of answering the same questions over and over.
ELIZA: What resemblance do you see?
PARRY: Why do you need to know that?
ELIZA: What do you think?
PARRY: I don’t understand your motives.

Sounds just like a conversation between a human doctor and a human patient, doesn’t it?

Lay responses to ELIZA were disturbing to Weizenbaum and motivated him to write the book Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation, in which he explains the limits of computers, as he wants to make clear his opinion that the anthropomorphic views of computers are just a reduction of human beings or any life form, for that matter. ELIZA has been frequently referenced in popular culture and continues to be a source of inspiration for programmers and developers focused on artificial intelligence.

Biography of Joseph Weizenbaum

Joseph Weizenbaum was born (as Josef) on 8 January 1923, in an assimilated, upper-middle-class Jewish family in Mitte, Berlin, Germany. He was the second son (Joseph had a brother Heinrich Chaim (Henry Sherwood) (1921-2005)) of the furrier Jechiel Hermann (Harry) Weizenbaum (1879-1954), a Galician Jew from Chrzanow, and his wife, Henriette Orman (1901-1978) from Vienna. Jechiel had a son, Leo (1906-1993), from a previous marriage. The family was forced to leave Berlin in 1935 when the Nazis enacted anti-Semitic legislation, and they emigrated the next year from Bremen, Germany, to the United States, in Detroit, where Weizenbaum’s aunt owned a bakery.

At the local high school, Joseph had to learn English, which he didn’t speak at first. “Of all the things that one could study,” he later said, “mathematics seemed by far the easiest. Mathematics is a game. It is entirely abstract.” In his school’s metalworking class, he learned to operate a lathe. The experience brought him out of his brain and into his body. Weizenbaum began studies in mathematics at Wayne State University in Detroit in 1941 but left the next year to join the Army Air Corps, in which he served as a meteorologist. After the war, he returned to complete his studies at the mathematics department, where he worked on the development and programming of the first large computers. In 1952, he went into industry, working on an early General Electric computer development project for the Bank of America.

Weizenbaum joined MIT in 1963 as a visiting associate professor of computer science. Within four years, he had been awarded tenure in the Department of Electrical Engineering. He later held academic appointments at Harvard University, Stanford University, the Technical University of Berlin, and the University of Hamburg in Germany. He was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of the New York Academy of Science, and of the European Academy of Science.

Weizenbaum proudly described himself as a heretic of technology and was a staunch socialist in his youth. In his remarkable 1976 book “Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation” he displayed ambivalence toward computer technology and warned against giving machines the responsibility for making genuinely human choices. Specifically, he argued that it was not just wrong but dangerous and, in some cases, immoral to assume that computers would be able to do anything given enough processing power and clever programming.

Weizenbaum’s initial wariness about computers and humanity’s reliance on them later evolved into a deep resentment. “No other organism, and certainly no computer, can be made to confront genuine human problems in human terms,” he wrote. By the early 1980s, he was railing against the concept of computer illiteracy, saying it was a form of “mass hysteria” drummed up by computer manufacturers as a way to sell more products. The real focus, he said, should not be on computer literacy but on literacy itself.

In the middle 1940s, Weizenbaum married Selma Edith Goode (1923-1988), a Jewish civil rights activist and early member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and they had a son, David, but in the late 1940s, the couple got divorced. In 1952, Weizenbaum married the schoolteacher Ruth Manes, and they had four daughters (Pm (b. 1955), Sharon (b. 1956), Miriam (b. 1960), and Naomi (b. 1961)), but this marriage also ended in divorce in the early 1990s. In 1996, Joseph Weizenbaum moved to Berlin and lived in the vicinity of his childhood neighborhood. He died on 5 March 2008 (aged 85) of stomach cancer in Gröben, Brandenburg, and was buried in Berlin-Weissensee Jewish Cemetery.

In the middle 1860s the young machinist from Newark, New Jersey, Zadock Pratt Dederick (1849-1923), along with Isaac Grass, created a steam-powered humanlike robot designed to pull a cart. The invention was patented on 24 March 1868 (see US patent Nr. 75874) and operated through a system of levers and cranks, attached to steam-powered pistons and a boiler. The original prototype cost $2000 (equivalent to some 41000 in 2023). Plans to produce it for $300 never went through, making this an example of an early development in steam power that was abandoned. Nonetheless, inventions such as this spurred interest in steam power, as exemplified by novels such as The Steam Man of the Prairies (considered the first science fiction dime novel in the United States), and by many imitations and hoaxes that appeared.

In March 1868 the invention was exhibited in a house across from P. T. Barnum’s Broadway museum in New York and became very popular. It continued to be shown in 1869 in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Fort Wayne, Indiana. The exhibitions were held back by insurance companies who continued to insist on safety precautions such as using slings to hold up the Steam Man and not allowing it to operate at full speeds. The demos continued until the autumn of 1870 when the Steam Man sank into obscurity. The machine was described many times in the press, let’s mention only: Newark (N.J.) Advertiser (23 January 1868), New York Express (21 March 1868), Popular Science Monthly, Scientific American (Vol 17. No. 5 p74 1868), etc. Let’s examine the article in Newark Advertiser:

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Mr. Zadock Deddrick, a Newark machinist, has invented a man; one that, moved by steam, will perform some of the most important functions of humanity; that will, standing upright, walk or run as he is bid, in any direction, and at almost any rate of speed, drawing after him a load whose weight would tax the strength of three draught horses. The history of this curious invention is as follows: Six years ago Mr. Deddrick, the inventor, who is at present but twenty-two years of age, conceived the novel idea of constructing a man that should receive its vitality from a perpetual motion machine. The idea was based on the well-known mechanical principle that, if a heavy weight be placed at the top of an upright slightly inclined from vertical, gravitation will tend to produce a horizontal as well as vertical motion. The idea was unsuccessful. However, by observing carefully the cause of failure, persevering and perfecting the man-form, and by substituting steam in place of the perpetual motion machine, the present success was attained.

The man stands seven feet and nine inches high, the other dimensions of the body being correctly proportioned, making him a second Daniel Lambert, by which name he is facetiously spoken of among the workmen. He weighs five hundred pounds. Steam is generated in the body or trunk, which is nothing but a three-horse power engine, like those used in our steam fire engines. The legs which support it are complicated and wonderful. The steps are taken very naturally and quite easily. As the body is thrown forward upon the advanced foot the other is lifted from the ground with a spring and thrown forward by the steam. Each step or pace advances the body two feet, and every revolution of the engine produces four paces. As the engine is capable of making more than a thousand evolutions a minute, it would get over the ground, on this calculation, at the rate of a little over a mile a minute. As this would be working the legs faster than would be safe on uneven ground or on broad street cobble stones, it is proposed to run the engine at the rate of five hundred revolutions per minute, which would walk the man at the modest speed of half a mile a minute.

The fellow is attached to a common rockaway carriage, the shafts of which support him in a vertical position. These shafts are two bars of iron, fastened in the usual manner to the front of the carriage, and are curved so as to be joined to a circular sustaining bar, which passes around the waist, like a girth, and in which the man moves so as to be faced in any direction. Besides these motions, machinery has been arranged by which the figure can be thrown backward or forward from a vertical nearly forty-five degrees. This is done in order to enable it to ascend or descend all grades. To the soles of the feet spikes or corks are fixed, which effectually prevent slipping. The whole affair is so firmly sustained by the shafts and has so excellent a foot-hold, that two men are unable to push it over, or in any way throw it down. In order to enable it to stop quickly it is provided with two appliances, one of which will, as before stated, throw it backward from the vertical, while the other bends the knees in a direction opposite to the natural position.

An upright post, which is arranged in front of the dash-board, and within easy reach of the front seats, sustains two miniature pilot wheels, by the turning of which these various motions and evolutions are directed. It is expected that a sufficiently large amount of coal can be stowed away under the back seat of the carriage to work the engine for a day, and enough water in the tank under the front seat to last half a day.

In order to prevent the “giant” from frightening horses by its wonderful appearance Mr. Deddrick intends to clothe it and give it as nearly as possible a likeness to the rest of humanity. The boiler, and such parts as are necessarily heated, will be encased in felt and woolen undergarments. Pantaloons, coat and vest, of the latest styles, are provided. Whenever the fire needs coaling, which is every two or three hours, the driver stops the machine, descends from his seat, unbuttons “Daniel’s” vest, opens a door, shovels in the fuel, buttons up the vest, and drives on. On the back, between the shoulders, the steam cocks and gauges are placed. As these would cause the coat to set awkwardly, a knapsack has been provided that completely covers them. A blanket, neatly rolled up and placed on top of the knapsack, perfects the delusion. The face is molded into a cheerful countenance of white enamel, which contrasts well with the dark hair and mustache. A sheet iron hat with a gauge top acts as a smoke stack.

The cost of this “first man” is $2,000, though the makers, Messrs. Deddrick & Grass, expect to manufacture succeeding ones, warranted to run a year without repair, for $300. The same parties expect to construct, on the same principle, horses which will do the duty of twelve ordinary animals of the same species. These, it is confidently believed, can be used alike before carriages, street cars and plows. The man now constructed can make his way without difficulty over any irregular surface whose ruts and stones are not more than nine inches below or above the level of the road.

Biography of Zadock Dederick

Zadock (also spelled as “Zadoc”) Pratt Dederick was born on 8 August 1849 in Hensonville, Greene County, New York, USA. He was the son of William Henry Dederick (1806-1870) and Harriet (Bailey) Dederick (1819-1857). Zadock had a sister—Eleanor (1841-1902), and two brothers—Henry Stanley (1842-1918) and Ethan E. (1852-1854).

In the 1868 issue of Newark City Directory, Zadoc P. Dederick is mentioned as a patternmaker, residing at 87 Spring St. in Newark, NJ. The Steam Man of Dederick from the late 1860s never turned into a business success and in 1876 he moved to Sherman, Texas, where he founded The Dederick Well Machine Works which manufactured well drilling machinery for the burgeoning oil industry and other uses. While in Texas, Zadock used to work for many years as a patent attorney, and after the 1868 patent for Steam Man, he took two other US patents (Nr. 599074 from 15 Feb. 1898 for Acetylene-Gas Generator, and Nr. 845765 from 5 March 1907 for Automatic Mail and Parcel Delivery Apparatus).

Zadock was married three times: first, to Mary Elizabeth Fleming (1850-1881) of Mississippi, and they had three sons and a daughter. After the early death of Mary in 1881, in 1891 Zadock married Flora Bernard from Indiana (1873-), and they had three daughters. It seems Flora also died young at the end of the 1890s, because in 1900 Zadock married Ada Cole (1878–1953) of Missouri, and they had two sons and three daughters. Zadock Dederick died on 22 February 1923 (aged 73) in Sherman, Texas.

The first industrial robot in the world, called Unimate, was made in the 1950s by the American inventor and entrepreneur George Charles Devol (1912–2011). Devol’s patent for the first digitally operated programmable robotic arm (see US pat. Nr. 2988237) represents the foundation of the modern robotics industry and earned him the title “Grandfather of Robotics”.

Devol was focusing on manipulators and magnetic recording patents since the 1940s, but he took note of the introduction of automation into factories. In the early 1950s, Devol licensed his digital magnetic recording device to Remington Rand and became manager of their magnetics department. There he worked with a team to develop his magnetic recording system for business data applications, and on developing the first high-speed printing systems. While the magnetic recording system proved too slow for business data, Devol’s invention was re-purposed as a machine control that would eventually become the “brains” of his Unimate robot.

After applying for his seminal patent in 1954 for a robotic arm that could move with six degrees of freedom and store step-by-step digital commands on a drum or other medium, Devol searched for a company willing to give him financial backing to develop his robot. He talked with many major corporations in the United States during his search and obtained an audience with a partner in the firm Manning, Maxwell, and Moore in Stratford, Connecticut. Joseph Frederick Engelberger (1925-2015), chief of engineering in the company’s aircraft products division was very interested, and Devol agreed to license his patent and some future patents in the field to the company. But the company was sold that year and its aircraft division was slated to be closed. Engelberger sought a backer to buy out the aircraft division and found one in Consolidated Diesel Electronic (Condec), which agreed to finance the continued development of the robot under a new division, Unimation Incorporated, with Engelberger as its president.

The first Unimate prototypes were hydraulically powered and controlled by vacuum tubes, though later versions used transistors. Most off-the-shelf components available in the late 1950s, such as digital encoders, were inadequate for the Unimate. With Devol’s guidance, a team of skilled engineers at Unimation designed and machined practically every part in the first Unimates. Devol also invented a variety of new technologies, including a unique rotating magnetic drum memory system with data parity controls.

The company spent about $5 million to develop the first Unimate robot. In 1960, Devol personally sold the first Unimate, which was shipped in 1961 to General Motors, which used the machine for die-casting handling and spot welding. Soon companies such as Chrysler, Ford, and Fiat saw the necessity for large Unimate purchases. In 1966, after many years of market surveys and field tests, full-scale production began in Connecticut. Unimation’s first production robot was a material handling robot and was soon followed by robots for welding and other applications. In 1975, Unimation showed its first profit. In 1978, the PUMA (Programmable Universal Machine for Assembly) robot was developed by Unimation from Vicarm (Victor Scheinman) and with support from General Motors.

Biography of George Devol

George Charles Devol Jr. was born into wealth in Louisville, Kentucky, on 20 February 1912. He was the son of George Charles Devol Sr. (1883-1958) and Elsa Jane (Vance) Devol (1882-1949), who married in 1908. The Devols were a famous business family from New Albany, Indiana, owners of ironworks and dealers in stoves, tin, copper and ironware, plumbing, and gas fitting. George Charles Jr. had a younger brother—John Vance (1918–1998).

George became interested in electricity and machines at an early age, showing curiosity towards everything from boats to planes to any sort of engine. Unlike many early innovators in the computing world, Devol didn’t have much of a scholarly interest in maths or science. He was more concerned with how things worked, how they didn’t, and how they could possibly work better. Towards this end, he read everything he could about mechanical devices, besides building and working with as many interesting devices as he could manage.

George attended Riordan Prep and gained some practical experience helping run the school’s electric light plant. He didn’t go to an engineering school upon graduation but started a company. In 1932, Devol formed United Cinephone to produce variable area recording directly onto film for the new sound motion pictures (“talkies”). However, he later learned that companies like RCA and Western Electric were working in the same area, and discontinued the product. During that time, Devol developed and patented industrial lighting and invented the automatic opening door.

In 1939, Devol applied for a patent for proximity controls for use in laundry press machines, based on a radio frequency field. This control would automatically open and close laundry presses when workers approached the machines. Around that time, Devol approached Sperry Gyroscope to pitch his ideas on radar technology and was hired as manager of the Special Projects Department, which developed radar devices and microwave test equipment.

Later in the war, Devol approached Auto-Ordnance Company regarding products that the company could produce aside from their primary product line, which were Thompson submachine guns. In 1943, he organized General Electronics Industries in Greenwich, Connecticut, which produced counter-radar devices until the end of the war. In 1946 Devol resigned from Auto Ordinance and joined RCA. After a short stint as eastern sales manager of electronics products, which he felt “wasn’t his ball of wax”, Devol left RCA to develop ideas that eventually led to the patent application for the first industrial robot. In 1946, he applied for a patent on a magnetic recording system for controlling machines and a digital playback device for machines. Devol was part of the team that developed the first commercial use of microwave oven technology, the Speedy Weeny, which automatically cooked and dispensed hotdogs in places such as Grand Central Terminal.

Devol also obtained patents on visual sensors for robots, textile presses, motor generators, coincidence detectors, coaxial connectors, non-refillable containers, and magnetostrictive manipulators or “micro-robotics”, another field he created. He was elected to honorary member of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (1985), inducted into the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame (2011), and a Member of the Automation Hall of Fame.

George Devol married in 1938 Evelyn Ruth Jahelka (7 Dec 1915-3 Jan 2003), and they had two daughters and two sons: Christine (born 1942), George C. (b. 1945), Robert (b. 1949), and Suzanne (b. 1951). Devol died of natural causes at age 99 on 11 August 2011, at his home in Wilton, Connecticut.

Quite a few engineers and computer pioneers worked on devices and programs, able to play chess (or to resolve simple chess problems), let’s mention only Leonardo Torres, Alan Turing, Claude Shannon, and Dietrich Prinz. By the middle 1950s computers became powerful enough, so it was a matter of time to appear a program able to play a complete chess game. The first one was written in 1956-57 by the chess player and programmer at IBM Alex Bernstein, with the help of several colleagues.

Alex Bernstein (1930-1999) was an Italian-born American, who started playing chess seriously during his high school time at City College of New York. After graduating from Columbia University, he served in the US Army, where he became acquainted with computers. In 1956, as a full-time employee at IBM, he got interested in writing a chess program, went to one of the managers of IBM, and got approval to spend half of his time working on the program, and access to an IBM 704 mainframe, IBM’s first mass-produced computer (it used vacuum tube logic, could do 42000 instructions per second and had a memory of 70K). Starting the work, Bernstein drew upon not only his own experience with chess, but began to study Modern Chess Openings book, and spent six months going through some 500 chess openings. He assigned scores to various positions, scores that depended not only on the pieces retained but also on area control of the board and mobility. He also developed a fourth measure, what he called a “greens area” around the king, meaning that the more squares outward from the king controlled by his own side the better. But after six months of this, he gave it up. He couldn’t make any sense of it.

At some point, Bernstein became aware of Turing’s work and read at least one of Shannon’s papers. When he finally began to see how he might codify some of the principles he felt were essential, he telephoned Claude Shannon. “I went up to MIT and spent a day or two with him, telling him what I was planning to do, and he said he thought it was intelligent, and a good way of proceeding. Essentially I felt I’d received his blessings, which was pleasant.”

Bernstein’s program turned out to be a perceptive combination of his own chess intuitions, what he had learned from Nimzowitsch’s book My System, and happily, some of the things he had learned from his first six months with Modern Chess Openings. One of the program’s major features was that it eliminated a large portion of the legal possible moves from consideration, and concentrated upon those legal moves that were likely to prove fruitful. The program contained a large database, which allowed it to examine any particular piece or square at any time. In descending order of importance, the program asked such questions as: Is the king in check? If he is in check, there is nothing else to do. Is the king in double check? If he is, merely capturing one piece that threatens the king will be insufficient; the king must be moved. The next question had to do with material: is there any to be gained, or any in danger of capture? And clearly, it is more important to rescue or capture a rook than to rescue or capture a pawn, and this was factored into the program. Bernstein told the computer what move to make by flipping the switches on the front panel of the console (see the upper photo). The program was advanced enough to evaluate four half-moves ahead and took about eight minutes to calculate each move.

There came a time to try out the chess machine. Bernstein had the sense to try it out first without an audience. “There was a bug. The very first move the machine ever made was to resign!” It had taken two years of work to get the chess-playing machine going, and for several years thereafter, bugs were still being discovered, not only by Bernstein and his group, but by outsiders who had requested copies of the program, and who uncovered more surprises. “It played, I think, a sort of respectable beginner’s game,” Bernstein says, “and every once in a while it made a move which was remarkably good.”

The chess program garnered some unexpected global interest, but this success had some unexpected results. To be sure, Bernstein received all the publicity he could have hoped for—besides the usual scientific meetings he was invited to address, he found himself written up in the New York Times, and in June 1958 an article in Scientific American reached a wide international audience (see the article Computer vs. Chess-Player). In July 1958 Bernstein wrote a similar article for Chess Review journal (see the article A Chess Playing Program for the IBM 704). Despite this success of IBM technologies, T. J. Watson, the president of the company, was not amused, as stockholders had challenged him, wanting an explanation for the money being wasted on playing games 🙂

Biography of Alex Bernstein

Alex Bernstein was born Aleksei Bernstein on 14 December 1930, in Milan, Italy. He was the son of the prominent mathematician Vladimiro Bernstein. Vladimiro was born on 13 July 1900 as Владимир Бернштейн in Sankt Peterburg, Russia, to a famous family of Russian Jews, and entered the local university when he was 17 to specialize in mathematics. In 1919 he decided to escape from the turmoils in Russia and fled to Finland. Unfortunately, he was seriously wounded crossing the border, and lost one of his lungs (this was the primary reason for his early death on 23 Jan 1936 in Milan). From Finland, Vladimir moved to England, then to Paris, where he graduated in Mathematical Sciences at the Sorbonne University. He then taught at the University of Geneva, and in 1930 he moved to Italy and taught at the Universities of Milan and Pavia.

In 1940, Vladimir’s mother Elizabeth, and her second husband fled from Fascist Italy, bringing Alex and his sister Vera to New York. Bernstein studied at the Bronx Science High School, where he was captain of the chess team. Then he entered City College of New York and graduated from Columbia University before to went into the army (Signal Corps). From the summer of 1953 to the summer of 1955, Bernstein worked at the Bureau of Standards, working part-time for IBM. In 1956 IBM offered him a full-time job and he accepted.

Alex Bernstein died on 11 March 1999 in Larchmont, New York.

Dietrich Günther Prinz (1903–1989) was a German-English computer science pioneer, notable for his work on early British computers at Ferranti, and in particular for developing the first chess program in 1951, at least 40 years after El Ajedrecista of Leonardo Torres.

Prinz was born in Berlin, Germany, where he studied physics and mathematics, and went to work on electronic design at Telefunken. Having some Jewish parentage and fearing persecution, he left Germany in 1935 with the rise of Nazism and settled in England. In 1936 he joined the Research Laboratories of the General Electric Co. at Wembley, where he worked in the valve development laboratory. In 1947, Prinz was recruited to the Ferranti factory at Moston, Manchester, for a team to study the potential uses of electronic computers. After Ferranti was awarded a contract to build a production version of the Manchester computer, which would become the Ferranti Mark 1, the world’s first commercially available general-purpose electronic computer, Prinz worked closely with the University of Manchester team.

Prinz had learned programming on the Mark I (It was quite a difficult task because Mark I didn’t have an assembly language that would have allowed simple helpful mnemonics for data. Instead, the input was very much based on base-32 representation, putting strings of base-32 instructions or constants into base-32 positions in the store.) from seminars led by Alan Turing. Influenced by him, and later by other colleagues, Prinz came to see chess programming as “a clue to methods that could be used to deal with structural or logistical problems in other areas, through electronic computers”. Turing had also worked out an algorithm for playing chess, but Prinz’s work was independent of this. As Mark I was inadequate to play a complete game of chess, Prinz concentrated on the endgame. In November 1951, his program on the Ferranti Mark I first solved a Mate-in-Two problem.

In order to have a program working in the shortest possible time, a few restrictions were imposed on the rules of chess as they were “explained” to the machine. For example, castling was not permitted, nor were double moves by pawns, nor taking en passant nor the promotion of a pawn into a piece when it reached the last row; further, no distinction was made between mate and stalemate.

The program contained a routine for the construction of the next possible move, a routine to check this move for legality, and various sequences for recording the moves and the positions obtained. All these separate subroutines were linked together by a master routine which reflected the structure of the problem as a whole and ensured that the subroutines were entered in the proper sequence.

The program, as well as the initial position on the chess board, was supplied to the machine on punched tape and then transferred to the magnetic store of the machine. An initial routine (sub-program) was transferred to the electronic store, and the machine started its computation. The program was so organized that every first move by white was printed out; after the key move had been reached the machine printed: “MATE.”

The main result of the experiment was that the machine is disappointingly slow when playing chess—in contrast to the extreme superiority over human computers where purely mathematical problems are concerned. For the simple example given in the position reproduced here, 15 minutes were needed to print the solution. A detailed analysis shows that the machine tried about 450 possible moves (of which about 100 were illegal) in the course of the game; this means about two seconds per move on average.

A considerable portion of this time had to be used for a test for self-check (i.e. after a player had made a move, to find out whether his own King was left in check). This was done by first examining all squares connected to the King’s square by a Knight’s move, to see (a) whether they were on the board at all, (b) whether they were empty or occupied, (c) if occupied, by a piece of which color and (d) if occupied by a piece of the opposite color, whether or not this piece was a Knight. A similar test had to be carried out for any other piece that might have put the King in check. This test involves several hundreds of operations and, at a machine speed of 1 msec per operation, might take an appreciable fraction of a second.

The next important time-consuming factor was the magnetic transfers, i.e. the transfers of sub-programs and data (relating to positions and moves) between the magnetic and the electronic store. It is here that improved programming techniques may save time by better utilization of the electronic store, thus reducing the number of transfers (nine for every legal move in the present program).

Compared with these two items, the time spent in computing the moves appeared to be of minor importance although the machine not only computed the possible moves but also the impossible, but “thinkable” moves—meaning those which either carry the piece off the board or lead to a collision with a piece of the same color already on the square. These moves, however, were quickly rejected by the machine and did not contribute greatly to the total computation time.

What was the first chess problem solved by a computer? The task set for the Mark I machine was to find a move by white that would lead to a mate in the next move, whatever black might answer (see the upper image). The move is R—R6.

Biography of Dietrich Prinz

Dietrich Günther Prinz was born on 29 March 1903 on Elsasserstraße 1/2, Berlin, Germany, to the German lawyer Georg Prinz and his wife Erna (Bukofzer) Prinz, a Jew. Dietrich had a sister, Ilse Rose (born 1904).

Prinz was educated at the Humboldt University of Berlin in the early 1920s, where his teachers included Max Planck and Albert Einstein. He gained his doctorate (Ph.D. in Physics) under Einstein around 1930 (one of his class reports was signed by Einstein). In his student years, Prinz got his first patents—DE528902 from 1926 for Circuit with continuous change of a voltage applied to the arrangement, DE568860 from 1928 for Arrangement for changing (modulating) the amplitude or frequency of electrically generated musical tones in the rhythm of an alternating voltage, and DE506689 from 1928 for Electric musical instrument.

From 1930 to 1935, Dr. Prinz was working for Telefunken, a German radio and television company, and filed several patents for: Means of synchronizing the horizontal and vertical scanning frequencies in a television set; Single tune radio receiver; Loudspeaker that could be used for the electric rendition of phonograph records and also for broadcast reception; Vacuum tube for short waves.

In 1935, Prinz, knowing what he can expect from Nazies as a half-Jew, left Germany and settled in England, where in January 1936, he joined the General Electric Company (GEC) Research Laboratories in Wembley, on the outskirts of London. He worked on the development of vacuum tubes and was assigned to the Valve Development Laboratory. During World War II, Prinz was interned in Canada, just like Josef Kates. While in the New World, in 1942, Prinz wrote an article called “Class C Telegraphy,” for Wireless Engineer magazine. In April 1944, Prinz authored a paper called “Contributions to the Theory of Automatic Controllers and Followers,” published in the Journal of Scientific Instruments.

In 1945, Prinz returned to work in Leeds for Bowen Instrument Company. By 1945, he had several British patents such as improvements in mercury arc electric converters and improvements in electric voltage measuring instruments. In 1947, Prinz was hired by the instrument department at Ferranti Ltd, a major UK electrical engineering and equipment firm known primarily for defense electronics (radar sets, avionics, and other military electronics), but also for television sets, radios, and electric clocks.

In October 1948, the British government commissioned Ferranti Ltd to manufacture a commercial machine to Frederic Williams’ specifications. In September 1948, Prinz visited the United States to assess computer developments on behalf of Ferranti. He also visited Cambridge University to examine the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC), the first practical stored-program electronic computer.

In 1949, Prinz helped develop the Digital Automated Tracking and Resolving (DATAR) system. This was a computerized information system that combined radar and sonar information to provide commanders with an “overall view” of a battlefield. Prinz was also studying methods of high-speed data transmission.

By the late summer of 1949, the detailed design of the Manchester Mark 1 was already being transferred to Ferranti. In 1950, Prinz wrote an article for Nature magazine called, “A Relay Machine for the Demonstration of Symbolic Logic.” He and Wolfe Mays built the first electrical relay logic machines in the United Kingdom.

In 1950, Donald Davies published an article called “A Theory of Chess and Noughts and Crosses” in Penguin Science News. This article influenced Prinz to look at computer chess programming. In the same year, he was attending seminars by Alan Turing and Cecily Popplewell and learned about computer programming, which led him to the creation of the first practical chess program. In 1951, Prinz took part in the design of the NIMROD computer of John Bennett, to play the game of NIM. The computer was first displayed during the 1951 Festival of Britain. Prinz and Ian Howard, an undergraduate at Manchester University, played the game of Nim on the machine during the festival. In October 1951 Prinz demonstrated NIMROD in the British pavilion of the German Industrial Exhibition in Berlin (see the nearby image).

From 1951 to 1953, Lord Bertram Vivian Bowden (1910-1989) was responsible for selling early computers manufactured by Ferranti. In his 1953 book, Faster than Thought, he dedicated a chapter to Prinz’s chess program and described the inventor as talented and extremely modest man.

In 1951, Prinz wrote up the first instruction manual for the Mark I, called “Introduction to Programming on the Manchester Electronic Digital Computer.” He was also becoming an expert at linear programming. In 1952, Prinz published an article called “Robot Chess” for Research magazine. By 1952, he was Head of Programming at Ferranti. In 1955, Prinz and David Caplin programmed a Ferannti Mark I computer to play Mozart’s Musikalisches Wurfelspiel. In 1966, Prinz wrote a paper on the possibility of computing odds for place betting.

Prinz married late in his life, in early 1951, to Käthe Anna Hedwig (Schünemann) Prinz (born 27 August 1909 in Berlin). They had a son—Jonathan Franklin Prinz (born in 1953) and a daughter, Daniela Prinz Derbyshire (born in 1963). Dietrich Günther Prinz died on 15 December 1989 in Manchester, England.

Josef Kates (1921–2018) was a Canadian engineer and computer pioneer whose achievements include designing the first digital game-playing machine, and the world’s first automated traffic signalling system. Kates’s game-playing machine, the 4-meter-tall Bertie the Brain, was exhibited in August 1950 at the Canadian National Exhibition. The game was a version of Tic-tac-toe, with adjustable difficulty levels. Kates recalled: “On the UTEC we were actually playing games, so I said, ‘Look, we can build a game-playing machine’…. Practically everybody knows tic-tac-toe. I thought it would make a nice exhibit.” The University of Toronto Electronic Computer (UTEC) was one of the world’s first working computers developed by a group of engineers, that included Kates.

The game machine controlled the lighting of an overhead display to show the progress of the game and was built using a special electron tube, the Additron Tube, which Kates had invented a couple of years ago. The Additron Tube did the work of ten existing radio tubes, reducing the size and complexity of the machine. It was an elegant solution to reduce the need for a computer to have a dozen radio vacuum tubes to perform even the most basic of functions. It was patented in March 1957 and described as such:
An electronic vacuum tube having characteristics making it adapted to perform the functions indicated by a function table, for subtraction, for multiplication, for division, or for a switching arrangement.

Rather than a screen, Bertie’s display was instead made up of nine lightbulbs; each one lighting up a corresponding ‘X’ or ‘O’ on a display board. The ‘controller’ was a mini-version of the huge display, a nine-square pad that the player could press in order to place their naught or cross. When they did so it prompted Bertie to perform a binary notation to respond with a counter move. “It was a much bigger success than we thought,” recalled Kates. “There were always people surrounding it, lining up to play.” At the end of the CNE, its purpose served, Bertie the Brain was taken apart and largely forgotten. Unfortunately for its inventor, the Additron tube from which the computer derived its processing power became obsolete with the development of solid-state transistors.

Biography of Josef Kates

Josef Kates was born Josef Katz on 5 May 1921 in Vienna, Austria. He was the fifth of six children in an Austrian-Jewish family—Baruch (Bernard) Katz (born 1887 in Teofipol, Russian Empire, died 1969) and Chana Dwojra (Anna) Katz (née Entenberg) (born 1891 in Lviv, Russian Empire). Baruch and Anna married in 1912 and ran a grocery store as well as a modest import and export business in Vienna. Besides Josef they had: Gretl (died in infancy), Hermann (b. 1914), Cornelia (b. 1915), Lola (b. 1916), Olga (b. 1918), and Erika (b. 1924).

As his family didn’t have the means to raise properly all the children, Josef was sent, with two siblings, to live in different kinderheims, or children’s homes. He was admitted to Goethe-Realschule in Vienna in 1931. After the Anschluss in 1938, accompanied by a high-school friend, he fled to Italy to escape the Nazis, spending his first night hidden on the floor of a gondola. Italy was not a secure place for Jews, so Josef went through Milan, Zurich, and London, to Leeds in Yorkshire, where he found work as an optician’s apprentice. Fortunately, in 1939 his family also managed to escape and joined him in England. At the outbreak of World War II, Josef signed up to serve with the British army but was never deployed. Prime Minister Winston Churchill was taking no chances on spies or subversives being in their midst, so in 1940, Josef and 2300 other young men of German and Austrian origin were put aboard a steamer and sent across the Atlantic to an internment camp in Quebec.

Josef recalled being greeted by German detainees and Nazi sympathizers waiting on the other side of a barbed wire fence. “We marched into the camp in Three Rivers and the first thing we heard was the song When the blood of Jews spurts from our knives. A few days after the traumatic encounter, he was transferred to a camp deep in the woods of Ripples, N.B. Nazi sympathizers were kept separate to avoid violence while Josef and fellow Jewish prisoners chopped wood to keep the camp warm.

Although he had been a poor student in Vienna, Josef began studying for his high-school equivalency at the detainment camp, writing on toilet paper instead of notebooks. Eventually, proper supplies were provided. He threw himself into his studies and, ignoring his harsh and isolated environment, managed to complete his courses. The results placed him first in the entire province. Second place was secured by Walter Kohn, a fellow prisoner who went on to win a Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

In the fall of 1941, Josef was released from the camp but it was too risky to return to England, to reunite with his family. Based on his experience with optical lenses, he was offered work with Imperial Optical in Toronto. He worked in the precision department making gun sights and prisms for periscopes. He moved on to work with radar tubes at Rogers Majestic while simultaneously completing his BA and MA degrees in Mathematics and PhD in Physics at the University of Toronto, and was awarded his doctorate in 1951. At University, he and a group of engineers developed one of the world’s first working computers, the 12-bit University of Toronto Electronic Computer (UTEC). At the same time, Kates was busily developing a miniature vacuum tube of his own design, which he called the Additron, with help from friends at Rogers Majestic. Kates later set up his own consulting company and became instrumental in establishing Toronto’s computerized traffic control system, the first in the world. His company was later tasked with improving the flow of ships through the Welland Canal.

Kates served as a computer consultant to many Canadian and American firms and organizations. He was involved in the creation of Setak Computer Services Corp. Ltd. In 1974 he founded Josef Kates Associates Inc., for which he acted as president. In 1968, he was appointed to the Science Council of Canada and served as its chairman from 1975 to 1978. Kates was also chairman, CEO, and director of Teleride Sage Ltd. (1977–1996), and IRD Teleride (1996–1997) followed until his retirement. He was a holder of patents for Electronic vacuum tubes, Traffic monitoring and signal systems, and Systems and methods for documenting and enforcing traffic and parking regulations.

Kates married his first wife, Lillian (née Kroch), in 1944 in Toronto. The couple had four children: Louis, Naomi, Celina, and Philip Arthur. Two years after Lillian’s death in 1993, he married Kay Hill. Josef Kates died on 16 June 2018 (aged 97) in Toronto, Ontario.

While studying at the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University in 1907-1910, the young American John Hays Hammond Jr. (1888–1965) became interested in the new study of radio waves, and he was taken under the wing of Alexander Graham Bell, who not only became his mentor, but the two would remain close friends until Bell’s death in 1922. After graduating from Yale in 1910, Hammond took a job in the U.S. Patent Office, following the advice of his other mentor—Thomas Edison, who told him: “Inventing had to be a money-making proposition, where better to learn what fields were up-and-coming than in the Patent Office?” After he became an authority on the patent process, in 1911 Hammond founded the Hammond Radio Research Laboratory on his father’s estate in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

In the same 1911, Hammond hired as assistants two very good engineers—the young Indiana-born Benjamin Franklin Miessner (1890–1976), who just left the Navy, where he worked as a radio operator and invented the “cat whisker” detector which allowed for receiving radio waves by crystal sets, and Fritz Löwenstein (1874-1922). Lowenstein was an Austrian electrical engineer (Ashkenazi Jew, born in Ostrov Schlackenwerth, Bohemia, where his family owned a porcelain factory), who emigrated to the USA in 1899, and around 1900 worked as an assistant of the great inventor Nikola Tesla and accompanied him to Colorado Springs where they conducted a series of experiments with lightning and wireless transmission. Tesla described him as “a man possessed of the highest technical training.” Then Lowenstein worked for Lee de Forest, became a famous radio engineer, and built the first sound amplifier.

In 1912 Hammond started a project for the so-called Electric Dog, a mobile mechanism that would respond to light signals using selenium cells. The Electric Dog was a fun way to help people learn about science and was considered the ancestor of all self-directing robots of a phototropic nature. Miessner refined the design and ultimately built the device, with the help of Lowenstein. Later Miessner left Hammond’s employ, but Hammond allowed him to borrow and demonstrate the model.

Electric Dog worked with two cells of selenium behind each glass eye. When a light was flashed, and it fell on either eye, this reduced the electrical resistance of the selenium, allowing electrical currents to pass through. This started the motor which began turning the dog’s wheels. If neither selenium cell ‘eye’ received light sufficient to reduce its resistance so that its associated relay operated, then no power would reach the Motor and the Dog would remain OFF. If both ‘eyes’ received sufficient light then power would be supplied to the Motor but the solenoids would be OFF so the Dog would steer straight ahead.

If the light came through one eye; for example, the right eye, then the current would only pass through that particular eye. The way the electro-magnets and batteries were arranged would pull the rear wheel to the right. This would cause the dog to turn straight towards the light and the light would then shine into both eyes. The wheels would go straight again. Anytime the Electric Dog saw light, he would begin to move. To demonstrate how the Electric Dog worked Miessner put the device into action. From an electric flash, he threw light into the dog’s groggy eyes, and the machine began obediently moving toward his master. The dog would follow Miessner wherever he went with the light. The directional orientation of the dog corresponded to his light.

In May 1912 Hammond applied for a patent for the circuit of the “electric dog” (see US pat. Nr. 1387850 for System of Radiodirective Control).

After taking part in WWI, the New Zealand inventor Alban Joseph Roberts (1880-1950), who lived in England, started his work on automata. In early February 1920, he demonstrated “Kaiser” the Robot—an automaton that he controlled by remote control light waves. Next year, in 1921, Roberts demonstrated another life-size automaton controlled by light vibration. In 1924 he created for Circus Busch a female automaton on skates. In 1928 Roberts exposed in St George’s Hall, London a new robot, that looks like a sheik.

Robert’s “Kaiser” robot (see the nearby image from 1920) was an electrically powered automaton suited in sheet metal, that offered a walking/skating action without the need for an external prop. It was the first electrically powered automaton (in human form) to be remotely controlled (in this case by light), and was semi-autonomous (no external power or control wires), but not self-controlled.

From 1923 to 1928, according to media records, Capt. Alban J. Roberts was exhibiting and performing with his second automaton. This automaton is mechanically different from his earlier one (Kaiser) in that it has no individual legs, rolls around on a singular round base, has a space-frame body, and has an elaborate sculptured head with moving lips and eyebrows. The automatons garb appears to be that of an Arab. An article in a London newspaper from 1928 mentioned that:
Guided by an electric ray, this remarkable mechanical man amazed crowds in Trafalgar Square, London. Captain A. J. Roberts, inventor, is shown behind the robot, holding the device that guides and controls it.

Biography of Alban Roberts

Alban Joseph Roberts was born in Wellington, New Zealand, on 24 August 1880. He was the son of William Henry Roberts (1840-1924) and his wife Kate Clara (Bowern) Roberts (1849-1912). Alban had two brothers: Fletcher Francis (1879–1972) and Howard (1882-1962), and a sister—Agnes (born 1889).

We don’t know where Alban was educated, but in 1903 he was already titled an electrical engineer and was living in Patea, N.Z., where he was the first engineer of Municipal Electric Lighting Works. He resigned in June 1904 and moved to Christchurch, in South Island, New Zealand, where he got his first (of many) patens, for a Meat marker, and worked as an instructor in electricity at Kaiapoi Technical Classes.

In 1908 Alban moved to Sydney, Australia, where he made early experiments in wireless devices, and decided he would go on to experiment with remote control flight, both vessels (dirigibles, cars, ships) and devices (marine and aerial torpedoes). In 1909 he moved to England, where he was registered new member of the Aero Club of the UK, and in 1910 demonstrated a wireless motor launch at Dagenham Lake, Essex. In the same 1910, he demonstrated a wireless directed airship (dirigible) and a marine torpedo. In 1912 Alban was back in Australia and New Zealand, where he demonstrated his wireless dirigible. In 1914 on his way to London via Australia, he again demonstrated his dirigible. With the outbreak of WWI in 1914 Alban entered British Army, initially at Royal Navy as Lieutenant and retired in 1918 as a Honorary Captain of Royal Air Force.

In 1916, Roberts created a resonator that could operate a model aircraft with sound, and in 1920 he operated a driverless car with a whistle. Again in 1920, he also took a turn to the whimsical when he demonstrated a synesthesia machine that translated the tones of the human voice into different colors. In the 1920s he devised a few automata in human form and demonstrated his robots several times on the streets of London, as well as on magician Jasper Maskelyne’s Show at St George’s Hall in London and on Circus Busch.

Roberts was a holder of quite a few patents in the UK, France, USA, Canada, and Australia, e.g.: Improvements in and relating to the Amplification of Wireless Signals (UK pat. Nr. 191510272 from 1916), Improvements in and relating to Telegraphic and like Receiving Devices (UK pat. Nr. 191517321 from 1916), Improvements in or relating to steam engine governors (UK pat. Nr. 191517321 from 1922), Improvements in sound recording (UK pat. Nr. 325569 from 1928), Illumination device for advertising and spectacular purposes (US pat. Nr. 1769311 from 1930), Improvements in silk screen printing apparatus (UK pat. Nr. 567896 from 1944), etc. In 1938 he became a Director of Visular Directions Ltd, a new company in London.

On 27 November 1903, Alban Roberts married in Patea, New Zealand, to Ada Howitt (1877-1960), the second daughter of William Howitt (1840-1920), one of the most esteemed local residents, who arrived from Scotland in 1861. Alban married a second time in 1942 to Honor Mary Trevithick (1896–1975). The remarkable inventor Alban Roberts died on 17 December 1950, in Hampstead, London, England, at the age of 70, and was buried in Camden, London.

Lyman Frank Baum’s (author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz) 1901 illustrated novel, The Master Key: An Electrical Fairy Tale, Founded Upon the Mysteries of Electricity and the Optimism of its Devotees, describes the adventures of a teenage boy named Rob Joslyn (the book was dedicated to his son, Robert Stanton Baum, who would have been about fifteen at the time it was published). Rob experiments with electricity and accidentally touches “the Master Key of Electricity,” encountering a Demon who gives him various gifts. One of these gifts is a “Character Marker” introduced on page 94 as follows:

It consists of this pair of spectacles. While you wear them everyone you meet will be marked upon the forehead with a letter indicating his or her character. The good will bear the letter ‘G,’ the evil the letter ‘E.’ The wise will be marked with a ‘W’ and the foolish with an ‘F.’ The kind will show a ‘K’ upon their foreheads and the cruel a letter ‘C.’ Thus you may determine by a single look the true natures of all those you encounter.

Baum’s Character Marker device has been viewed retrospectively as an early foreshadowing of features analogous to those obtainable in augmented reality devices.

Homer Walter Dudley (1896-1980), B.S. in electrical engineering, 1921, Pennsylvania State College; M.A. in mathematics, 1924, Columbia University, was a member of the research staff of Bell Telephone Laboratories from 1921 to 1961. His work focused on improving the transmission of speech by wire, cable, and radio telephony systems. He received 37 patents for inventions in the fields of telephony and speech synthesis, and in 1965 was awarded the Franklin Institute’s Stuart Ballantine Medal for his work on the VOCODER, the first Electronic Speech Synthesizer.

It seems in 1926 Dudley began experimenting with electromechanical devices to produce analogs of human speech. A key to this process was the development of a parallel band-pass filter, which allowed sounds to be filtered down to a fairly specific portion of the audio spectrum by attenuating the sounds that fall above or below a certain band. This led in October 1928 to the idea of the “Vocoder” (for “VOice” and “enCODER”), first demonstrated at Harvard in 1936—a method of reproducing speech through electronic means and allowing it to be transmitted over distances, such as through telephone lines. By reproducing human speech electronically, the elements of speech could be filtered into ten specific audio spectrum bands, rendering it more easily transmitted over telephone lines with greater clarity and legibility. The speech could also be compressed down to a very narrow frequency band, to allow multiple transmissions simultaneously on different bands. This enabled many telephone conversations to be transmitted at the same time over one line.

With the assistance of fellow Bell Labs engineer Robert R. Riesz (a specialist in the physics of speech and hearing), in 1937 Dudley created the “VODER” (for “Voice Operation DEmonstratoR”), a console from which an operator could create phrases of speech controlling a VOCODER with a keyboard and foot pedals. Although it was considered difficult to operate, VODER was demonstrated at Bell Laboratory exhibits in 1939 at New York World’s Fair and Golden Gate International Exposition. With a woman operator sitting behind the console, phrases resembling human speech could be demonstrated to the audience, although the produced sounds were often difficult to understand. Whereas the VOCODER analyzes speech, transforms it into electronically transmitted information, and recreates it, the VODER generates synthesized speech by means of a console with fifteen touch-sensitive keys and a pedal. It basically consists of the “second half” of the vocoder, but with manual filter controls, and requires a highly trained operator.

On 21 June 1938 Dudley and Bell Labs were granted a patent (see US pat. Nr. 2121142) for a “System for the artificial production of vocal or other sounds”.

Biography of Homer Dudley

Homer Walter Dudley was born on 14 November 1896 in Oranda, Virginia, USA. He was the son of Reverend Walter Lee Dudley (1866-1944), and Sarah Catherine (Showalter) Dudley (1861–1919). Homer had a brother—Virgil Showalter (1895–1982), and two sisters—Katharine Louise (1898-1985), and Esther Virginia (1900–1974).

Walter Dudley was a pastor of Walnut Springs Church of Christ and principal of Oranda Institute (a church schoolhouse), and together with his wife also gave lessons to students, in classical and religious subjects. Dudley’s family moved to Pennsylvania when Homer was a schoolboy in 1907. Having been trained to be a grade school and high school teacher, Homer found it difficult to keep discipline in the classroom and soon gave up teaching. After taking part in WWI, Homer intended a change in career and enrolled in Pennsylvania State University, where he developed an interest in the nascent science of electronic engineering. After taking some college courses in electronic engineering, Dudley found employment with Bell Laboratories, which was at that time a division of Western Electric Company. His career with Bell Labs spanned 40 years, most of it in the Telephone Transmission Division. Dudley was one of the most productive inventors of Bell Labs, together with William Shockley and Claude Shannon.

During World War II Dudley worked with Alan Turing on the SIGSALY project for the US Military. SIGSALY was a method of transmitting speech in a secure manner, rendering it unable to be understood by unauthorized listeners. It utilized technology developed in the VOCODER and VODER projects and added a random noise source as a method of encrypting speech. SIGSALY was successfully used by the US military for transmitting the highest level of classified messages.

One of Dudley’s final projects was an electronic kit distributed by Bell Labs for home hobbyists and students. It was called “Speech Synthesis: an Experiment in Electronic Speech Production”, and contained the components with which to create an electronic circuit that could produce three different speech formants. The kit entered production in 1963 and was produced until the late 1960s.

In 1924 Dudley married Leta Marie Fairbairn (1899–1965) and they had three children. Homer Dudley died on 18 September 1980 (aged 83) in Maplewood, New Jersey.