(OPE-L) Re: The Church-Turing thesis

From: gerald_a_levy (gerald_a_levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Wed Jan 21 2004 - 19:16:00 EST


> Have you read Kurt Voneguts book Player
> Piano, written 1948?

No, I can't say that I have.  Karel Capek introduced this
theme in science fiction 27 years earlier.

Karel Capek's play  "R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)"
was performed in Prague in January, 1921. See:
http://www.czech-language.cz/translations/rur-introen.html
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/RUR-Capek-1920.htm

Although Karel Capek is credited with introducing the word 'robot'
into the English language, he credits his Cubist painter and writer
brother,  Josef, with originating the term:
http://capek.misto.cz/english/robot.html
(In 1939, Josef  was arrested and sent to a concentration camp.
He died at Belsen in April, 1945. Karel died on Christmas Day,
1938).

I briefly referred to Capek previously in:
http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/ope/archive/0005/0277.html

In solidarity, Jerry


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