The Institut Blaise-Pascal (1946-1969) from Couffignal's Machine to Artificial Intelligence

The Institut Blaise-Pascal, created in 1946, was France's first laboratory devoted to electronic computers, analog as well as digital. Its analog division, under L. Malavard, developed rheological methods that had been initiated in the early 1930s. Ifs numerical division was headed first by L. Couffignal who did not succeed in building his electronic calculator, based on a very particular design; then by R. de Possel, who actively developed computer facilities, computer science teaching and research, and undertook to achieve a universal optical character recognition system. The Institut Blaise-Pascal was divided into several independent teams in 1969.