The New Yorker, December 6, 1958 P. 44
Talk story about the perceptron, a new electronic brain which hasn't been built, but which has been successfully simulated on the I.B.M. 704. Talk with Dr. Frank Rosenblatt, of the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory, who is one of the two men who developed the prodigy; the other man is Dr. Marshall C. Yovits, of the Office of Naval Research, in Washington. Dr. Rosenblatt defined the perceptron as the first non-biological object which will achieve an organization o its external environment in a meaningful way. It interacts with its environment, forming concepts that have not been made ready for it by a human agent. If a triangle is held up, the perceptron's eye picks up the image & conveys it along a random succession of lines to the response units, where the image is registered. It can tell the difference betw. a cat and a dog, although it wouldn't be able to tell whether the dog was to theleft or right of the cat. Right now it is of no practical use, Dr. Rosenblatt conceded, but he said that one day it might be useful to send one into outer space to take in impressions for us.