Computers and Thought-The Back Story

Julian Feldman, a professor emeritus of information and computer sciences and the founding chair of the information and computer science program at the University of California, Irvine, shares views on the history of a book, Computers and Thought (C&T). It involves several papers on artificial intelligence and simulation of cognitive processes. It had been taught in the Business School at the University of California, Berkeley, in the early 1960s. It was one of the early academic books in computer science. Julian mentions that the authors and the publishers had not hesitated in granting permission to reprint the papers. Julian report that most of the expected royalties were going to be used for good deeds and the editors would not keep all the royalties. Allen Newell agreed to be a committee of one under the ACM to distribute the money that led to the series known as the 'Computers and Thought Lectures', which Newell used the royalty money to fund.