Faster Than Thought - The Ferranti Nimrod Digital Computer FIRST BOOK ABOUT COMPUTER GAMES

Hollinwood, Lancashire: Ferranti, Ltd. 1951.. First Edition. Softcover. Fine/No Jacket. The first book ever about a computer game. "Faster Than Thought: The Ferranti Nimrod Digital Computer." 8vo booklet, publisher's printed card covers, bound with staples, Hollinwood, Lancashire: Ferranti, Ltd. 1951. A FINE copy has tremendous interest to the Computing / AI history. Ferranti built a computer specifically yo play their game "Nim" at the 1951 Festival of Britain. The public were given access to play and included Alan Turing. "Alan spent August 1951 at Cambridge as usual, and from there a party went down on the train to London for the Festival of Britain. They went to the Science Museum in South Kensington where the science and technology exhibits were housed. They came across the NIMROD, which Ferranti were exhibiting. The Ferranti people were pleased to see Alan and said, 'Oh Dr Turing, would you like to play the machine?' which of course he did, and knowing the rule himself, he managed to win. The machine dutifully flashed up MACHINE LOSES in lights, but then went into a distinctly Turing-esque sulk, refusing to come to a stop and flashing MACHINE WINS instead. Alan was delighted at having elicited such human behavior from a machine." [A Hodges biographer of Turing]Turing had just published in Mind his landmark paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" which famously defines artificial intelligence and sets forth the Turing Test.The Ferranti booklet contains a detailed description of the game and the working of the computer, as well as a survey of work on machine intelligence at the time. The text notes that "the theory of games is extremely complex and a machine that can play a complex game can also be programmed to carry out very complex practical problems ... very similar to those required to examine the economies of a country in which neither a state of monopoly nor of free trade exists" (p 19).