a little historical background

The background for our web site is a page of handwritten notes of Allen Newell's and Herb Simon's describing the operation of the Logic Theorist, the first working artificial intelligence computer program. The notes are dated November 15, 1955 (see below), and appear to be a worked out proof. You can peruse more such notes online at the Newell and Simon Collections at Carnegie Mellon.

Newell and Simon's pioneering joint work on the computational basis of human cognition, Newell's work on cognitive architecture, and Simon's work on bounded rationality provide much of the scientific backdrop for our present efforts.