"The Eye of a Robot: Studies in Machine Vision at MIT" and "TX-O Computer" (1959)

The first of two films shown here, "Eye of a Robot" (to 18:30) summarizes computer vision research being carried out in the 1950s at the MIT Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence, under the direction of Marvin Minsky and with Patrick Winston and Berthold Horn supervising the robotics work. The film shows how "experimental computer programs extract line drawings from pictures and use knowledge about the three-dimensional world, and also how new ideas about artificial intelligence are used in these processes." The second film is silent and shows the TX-O computer at work, e.g on a tic-tac-toe game. Courtesy of MIT Museum.

[@smfield]

The year of this film is not correct. It was from 1980.

[@smfield]

I would know, I was in the lecture hall.

[@jaminova_1969]

"This is a Test" 21:40 - Fascinating to see the origins of Raster Graphics with a electro-mechanical input device on a CRT monitor. Analog Technology Rules!

[@play_history]

Not raster, this is vector or point-plotting display. Raster gets invented at Bell Labs.

[@LiLi-or2gm]

An excellent use of modern AI would be to dramatically improve the image quality of this film.

[@jaminova_1969]

Incredibly difficult to do when the source is low resolution and in poor condition.

[@lilblackduc7312]

The show would be more enjoyable if the video wasn't as fuzzy as a new, stuffed Teddy Bear!