Aegis 1956 (Yearbook)

YEAR: 1956
ITEM: Book
COMPANY: Dartmouth College
COUNTRY: USA
IN OUR COLLECTION: Yes

This is the 1956 yearbook for Dartmouth College. The earliest Artificial Intelligence conference in the USA was held at Dartmouth in 1956.

John McCarthy was the host for this conference and he is listed in the faculty section as having just arrived at Dartmouth in 1955. However, he seems to have missed the memo on the faculty picture so he is not pictured with his colleagues from the Math and Astronomy Department.

However, Dr. McCarthy is mentioned in the text summary of the department,

Those interested in the high level application of coin flipping and normal distributions can work with Laurie Snell while Gerry Thompson can teach you the proper game theory for simplified bridge. For those who want to program a computer or predict the storm of November 1, 1950, John McCarthy can show you the way.

We are not sure what the reference is to predicting a 1950 storm. It could be a swipe at "predicting" a fictional storm 6 years later or it might refer to Great Appalachian Storm of November 1950 which occurred at the end of November in 1956 and reached New Hampshire with winds of over 100 miles per hour.

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Documents

Documents for this item have not yet been scanned or not yet posted. There are a lot of pages...contact us if you have an immediate need. (Although there are not a lot of "immediate needs" for a 70+ year old computer!)

If you know the location of any other of these items, please let us know by contacting us at Director@TheComputerChurch.com .

OUR DEFINITIONS OF RARITY

One of a Kind: Only known existing item.
Exceedingly Rare: Only 2 to 10 known to exist.
Very Rare: Only 11 to 25 are known to exist.
Rare: Only 26 to 50 are known to exist.
Difficult: Difficult to find.
Available:Can be commonly be purchased.
Unknown: We cannot make a determination.

(For comparison: Many people consider the Apple-1 computer to be rare. As of 2025 there are 92 confirmed and probable Apple-1 computers.)

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