Understanding and Modeling the Foundations of Intelligence [SMC Innovators]

In the 1970s, Dr. Eugene Santos, Jr.'s parents ran a computer business. As a child in the early days of personal computing, Santos was exposed to some of the first personal computers, terminals, and modems. He remembers the old IBM mainframes and coding with what looked like an old teletype machine, as well as the punch cards. Both of his parents were also faculty members who taught and researched math and computer science. Given the rich and plentiful environments he could explore, Santos' curiosity naturally turned to computers. He learned from his mother as she built computers from kits, and he was given a Superboard and then a Challenger IP (both from Ohio Scientific, Inc.) with which to play. Santos learned to code on these early computers using both BASIC and assembly language.