On the Mechanical Performance of Logical Inference.

JEVONS, W[illiam] Stanley,.

Published by Taylor and Francis, London, 1870

About this Item

[pp. 497-518 along with 3 lithographic plates in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, for the year MDCCCLXX, Vol. 160]. TP + [iii]-iv = Advertisement + 3 unnumbered sheets inserted with recto and verso lists of institutions and individuals receiving Philosophical Transactions + [iii]-v = Contents + [vii] = List of Illustrations + [1]-174 + 2 large folded inserts + 175-608 + 52 Lithographic Plates, Quarto, First Edition (Hook & Norman, Origins of Cyberspace 330; Tomash & Williams, J15).A Landmark of Computer Science - Jevon's Original Announcement of His "Logical Piano"The First Working Analog ComputerThis paper, delivered to the Royal Society on January 20, 1970, preceded Jevon's more familiar presentation of the "logical piano" in Principles of Science by four years. Jevons' talk was accompanied by the exhibition and demonstration of an actual "logical piano" - and that machine can be seen today at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford.The machine was built according to Jevons' specification by a young Salfor clockmaker and has been described as "the first such machine with sufficient power to solve a complicated problem faster than the problem could be solved without the machine's aid" [Gardner, Logic Machines and Diagrams, p. 91]."From his thinking on the processes of logical inference, [Jevons] developed the idea that these might be performed mechanically. As early as 1865 he was trying to build a 'reasoning machine, or logical abacus' (Papers, 4.69), which evolved through several stages into a 'logical piano' or logical machine which he demonstrated before the Royal Society in January 1870. He thought it 'quite as likely to be laughed at as admired' (Letters and Journal, 250), but it was later to be recognized as one of the forerunners of twentieth-century computers…" [R.D. Collison Black, Dictionary of National Biography].[Jevons'] logic owes something to De Morgan and a good deal more to Boole. It represents in the main an attempt to simplify Boole's system by eliminating the more complex and uninterpretable of its mathematical operations and by reducing its procedures of calculation to a mechanical routine… Jevons's most interesting adaptation of Boole is to be seen in his method of indirect inference-the principle underlying his "logical piano" and other mechanical aids to calculation-whereby premises are used to eliminate inconsistent combinations of terms from a matrix listing all the possibilities under which a given set of terms and their negatives can be associated. The machine itself, exhibited at the Royal Society in 1870 and described in the Philosophical Transactions for the same year, anticipates in its design a number of the features of modern logical computers…[The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 4, p. 260] Contemporary ¾ leather with marbled boards which show a bit of wear overall along with a spine label with title gilt on a black field. There is a blacked-out former library stamp on the verso of the title page which has lightly bled through to the other side along with the stamped notification "Zum Verkauf freigegeben" (Released for Sale). Overall, this is a lovely copy of this famous presentation of the earliest analog computer ever built. ADDITIONAL PHOTOS AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST. Seller Inventory # 1256

Bibliographic Details

Title: On the Mechanical Performance of Logical ...

Publisher: Taylor and Francis, London

Publication Date: 1870

Edition: FIRST EDITION.