John Clark's amazing clockwork Eureka machine which can generate over 25 million different lines of hexameter Latin verse. A story of C19th AI.

1. 19th Century AI
A Story of Creativity
Mike Sharples
The Open University

2. London 1845, The Egyptian Hall, Picadilly

4. EGYPTIAN HALL
THE EUREKA
A MACHINE FOR
Making Latin Verse
Exhibited Daily, from 12 to 5 & 7 to 9 ;
ILLUSTRATIVE LECTURES
WITH
ADMISSION - - - 1s.

6. PESSIMA REGNA DOMI PRODUCUNT VULNERA MIRA

7. TURPIA DAMNA QUIDEM DECLARANT CARMINA NIGRA

8. TURPIA DAMNA QUIDEM DECLARANT CARMINA NIGRA
SHAMEFUL DAMAGE IS MANIFESTED BY BLACK SONGS

9. John Clark
1785 - 1853
“as great a curiosity as his machine,” Charles
Babbage
“He looked like a big boy, for he wore a short jacket
and very short trowsers, and his shirt was so open in
front that his skin was visible”
Great-niece, Margaret Thompson Sturge, Memories and Echoes
(1904)

10. Born in Somerset
Grocer
Upholsterer
Printer
Poet
Inventor

11. Air bed
Fire
escape
Waterproof
material

12. 13 years
Eureka – the
amazing
clockwork
poetry machine

13. Powered by a
clock
mechanism

14. Six drums – one for each Latin word
Each drum rotates a different amount

15. X
Y
Z
Each drum had
spikes of wire
Rods with letters
slid down to form
each word

16. The drums and spikes
were carefully designed
so that each line of
spikes produced a Latin
word and any
combination of words
formed a line of verse.

17. NOUN ADJECTIVE ADVERB VERB NOUN ADJECTIVE
26 million permutations of hexameter Latin

18. Was the poetry machine a
success?

19. It worked!
“Exhibited Daily,
from 12 to 5 & 7 to
9”
Funded a comfortable
retirement for Clark

20. Why did John Clark build the Eureka machine?
a) To help schoolchildren with their Latin
verse homework?
b) To assist him in writing poems?
c) To fund a comfortable retirement?
d) To explore artificial intelligence?

21. Why did John Clark build the Eureka machine?
d) To explore artificial intelligence

22. “Permit me, as the constructor of the Eureka, or Machine for composing Hexameter Latin Verses, to make a
few observations on its general principles, in reference to Dr. Nuttall's remarks, in your last week's
paper. The machine is neither more nor less than a practical illustration of the law of evolution. The
process of composition is not by words already formed, but from separate letters. This fact is perfectly
obvious, although some spectators may probably have mistaken the effect for the cause—the result for the
principle—which is that of kaleidoscopic evolution; and as an illustration of this principle it is that the
machine is interesting—a principle affording a far greater scope of extension than has hitherto been
attempted. The machine contains letters in alphabetical arrangement. Out of these, through the medium of
numbers, rendered tangible by being expressed by indentures on wheel work, the instrument selects such
as are requisite to form the verse conceived; the components of words suited to form hexameters being
alone previously calculated, the harmonious combination of which will be found to be practically
interminable.”
John Clark (1845). Letter to the Editor, The Atheneum, 923, 669-670.

23. Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary
study of mind and intelligence, embracing
philosophy, psychology, artificial
intelligence, neuroscience, linguistics, and
anthropology. Its intellectual origins are in
the mid-1950s when researchers in several
fields began to develop theories of mind
based on complex representations and
computational procedures.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cognitive-science/
John Clark was a pioneering cognitive
scientist
“practical illustration of the law of evolution”
“through the medium of numbers”
“the instrument selects such as are requisite to
form the verse”
“a most complex machine”
“a principle affording a far greater scope of
extension than has hitherto been attempted”
Eureka - An instrument to explore
human and machine creativity

24. “kaleidoscopic evolution … a principle
affording a far greater scope of extension
than has hitherto been attempted”
John Clark’s legacy
Story Machines

25. 1845
The Athenaeum magazine, June 1845

26. “And the Records Department, after all, was itself only a single branch of
the Ministry of Truth, whose primary job was not to reconstruct the past
but to supply the citizens of Oceania with newspapers, films, textbooks,
telescreen programmes, plays, … Here were produced rubbishy
newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology,
sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental
songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special
kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator.”
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
1949

27. Computer love-letter generator Christopher Strachey, 1952
1952

28. Murder mystery generator, Sheldon Klein, University of Wisconsin, 1973
1973

29. TALE-SPIN, James Meehan, University of California, 1977
1977

30. THE MISTAKEN KNIGHT
It was the spring of 1089, and a knight named Lancelot returned to Camelot from elsewhere. Lancelot was hot tempered. Once,
Lancelot had lost a joust. Because he was hot tempered, Lancelot wanted to destroy his sword. Lancelot struck his sword. His sword
was destroyed.
One day, a lady of the court named Andrea wanted to have some berries. Andrea wanted to be near the woods. Andrea moved to the
woods. Andrea was at the woods. Andrea had some berries because Andrea picked some berries. Lancelot’s horse moved Lancelot to the
woods. This unexpectedly caused him to be near Andrea. Because Lancelot was near Andrea, Lancelot loved Andrea. Some time later,
Lancelot’s horse moved Lancelot to the woods unintentionally, again causing him to be near Andrea. Lancelot knew that Andrea kissed
with a knight named Frederick because Lancelot saw that Andrea kissed with Frederick. Lancelot believed that Andrea loved
Frederick. Lancelot loved Andrea. Because Lancelot loved Andrea, Lancelot wanted to be the love of Andrea. But he could not because
Andrea loved Frederick. Lancelot hated Frederick. Andrea loved Frederick. Because Lancelot was hot tempered, Lancelot wanted to
kill Frederick. Lancelot wanted to be near Frederick. Lancelot moved to Frederick. Lancelot was near Frederick. Lancelot fought
with Frederick. Frederick was dead.
Andrea wanted to be near Frederick. Andrea moved to Frederick. Andrea was near Frederick. Andrea told Lancelot that Andrea was
siblings with Frederick. Lancelot believed that Andrea was siblings with Frederick. Lancelot wanted to take back that he wanted to
kill Frederick. But he could not because Frederick was dead. Lancelot hated himself. Lancelot became a hermit. Frederick was buried
in the woods. Andrea became a nun.
MORAL: Done in haste is done forever.
1992
MINSTREL, Scott Turner, UCLA, 1992

31. Just This Once, Scott French and “Hal”, 1993
“I spent nearly eight years and $50,000 of my own money studying computational linguistics, natural
language programming, and Artificial Intelligence, in order to program the best Expert System on the
market to think and write like Jacqueline Susann.”
1993

32. 1997
MEXICA, Rafael Pérez y Pérez, UAM Mexico, 1997

33. Create your own
story in seconds
Powered by GPT-3,
developed by
OpenAI
story-machines.net
2022

37. https://routledge.pub/Story-Machines