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"To the reader of the preceding paper it will be evident that mechanism is capable of replacing for the most part the action of thought required in the performance of logical deduction. Mental agency is required only in interpreting correctly the grammatical structure of the premises, and in gathering the purport of the reply... The machine is thus the embodiment of a true symbolic method or Calculus" (page 517). |
| JEVONS. W. Stanley. "On the Mechanical Performance of Logical
Inference," pp. 497-518 in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
of London for the year 1870, Vol. 160, Part II (the complete volume). London:
Taylor and Francis, 1870. Quarto, original printed wrappers. Housed in custom
half-leather box. Jevons article illustrated with three full-page plates bound in rear. $3200.
First printing; a landmark in computer science. Jevons invented a "logical piano" (so named because it resembled a small upright piano) that could perform, through a sequence of switches, various types of logical calculations. In doing so, he became "the first person to construct a machine with sufficient power to solve a complicated problem faster than the problem could be solved without the machine's aid" (Goldstine). "On the Mechanical Performance of Logical Inference," a paper Jevons read before the Royal Society on January 20, 1870, is his most detailed description of this early prototype of the modern computer. The logical piano now stands in the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford. Light wear to spine ends, marginal tear at fore-edge, affecting some of the margins of the plates (not touching the images). Rare in original wrappers. For an image of one of the plates
illustrating
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