a history of cybernetic animals and early robots
FRANKEN The original Franken maze solver was designed and built by Bert and Ivan Sutherland. I suspect it was built for Edmund C. Berkeley. Berkeley , it appears, had used the early version as a prototype, and engaged his other associates, namely Bob Jensen, Juli Skalski and Stan Skalski in drawing up a revised document suitable for …
Read More “1953 – “Franken” Maze-Solving Machine – Ivan and Bert Sutherland”
Despite his attempts in trying, as seen in the attached documents, I don't believe Edmund C. Berkeley ever realized the construction of James the intelligent robot. Specification of James: A man-like robot, with six sound tracks, a load speaker, and three or four sensory organs, which will seem to respond intelligently. – For rent to …
Read More “1951 – James the Intelligent Robot – Edmund C. Berkeley (American)”
The diagrammatic view of the 1950-1 Maze-solving Mouse built by Claude A. Shannon. Claude Shannon knew Edmund C. Berkeley quite well. Berkeley had two young associates working part-time with him on his early robots, by the names of Ivan and Bert Sutherland. Ivan was soon to have Claude Shannon as his Thesis supervisor. Berkeley was keen …
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Ivan Sutherland with M. Versatilis. Source: Carnegie Mellon University Archives Machina Versatilis , pictured above and below, was so named due to the versatile modular plug-in boards. M. Versatilis was the final of three models built, and at least two of this model were supposedly built. The first version, see blog post here, was originally built in …
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Who is Ivan E. Sutherland? Ivan was born in 1938, Nebraska, USA and is a computer pioneer, inventing Sketchpad, being the first what we now call a Graphical User Interface (GUI). He also built a walking machine, but that will be the subject to another post later. As an under-graduate student, Ivan, with his elder brother …
Read More “W. Grey Walter, Edmund C. Berkeley, Ivan E. Sutherland and the Tortoise”