18 The Perceptron: A Probabilistic Model for Information Storage and Organization (1958)

The "perceptron" of Frank Rosenblatt (1928-1971) is at once a dramatic early step toward artificial intelligence, a temporary casualty of intellectual rivalry, and a case study in the faddishness of scientific research trends. Educated at Cornell as a psychologist, Rosenblatt began developing an artificial perceptual mechanism when he joined Cornell's Aeronautical Laboratory after receiving his PhD in 1956. There he had access to what then counted as a large computer, the IBM 704. His first cut at a perceptron, in 1957, was an early experiment in training an artificial pattern-recognition system to improve its performance through reinforcement learning. This 1958 paper describes his refined model, complete with various tunable parameters and mathematics commonly used to describe physical systems. Rosenblatt pursued this line of research and other dramatically different experiments in neuroscience as a psychology professor until his death in a boating accident on his forty-third birthday.