AN “ELECTRONIC BRAIN”

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 25023, 4 November 1946, Page 3

AN “ELECTRONIC BRAIN”

•’ERENCE BY LORD MOUNTBATTEN

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) “ LONDON, November 1. An “electronic brain” which would Eormously expand the scope of the tuman brain was referred to by Adliral Lord Mountbatten, himself a radio specialist, at the twenty-first iniversary dinner of the British AsKiation of Radio Engineers, of which fee is president. The electronic brain, he said, would perform functions analogous to those ttiertaken by the automatic portion ci the human brain. There already existed a machine which could »olve complicated mathematical problems in traction of the time taken by a The answer to probems concerning the trajectory of missies in flight, which took a mathematician 10 days to find, could be obiined from this machine in four secMachines were now being devised hich could exercise those hitherto uman prerogatives, choice and judgment. One of them could even be ade to play a game of chess. The rferfence library of the future would esome kind of memory machine the ze of a large desk, from which a an could extract all the information E needed by pressing a few keys. Admiral Mountbatten said: “It ®ns that to-day we are really facing revolution of the mind, and in this solution the responsibilities facing Jffltets.are formidable and serious, kaitists have been too much inped to sit in their ivory towers khmg their hands of the results of pr discoveries and inventions. This ►tius Pilate attitude is out of date W—it is worse, it is anti-social.”