IBM's Automatic Translator was a machine translation system that converted Russian documents into English. The Translator used an optical disk that stored 170,000 word-for-word and statement-for-statement translations and a custom computer to look them up at high speed. Built for the US Air Force's Foreign Technology Division, the AN/GSQ-16 (or XW-2), as it was known to the Air Force, was primarily used to convert Soviet technical documents for distribution to western scientists. The Translator was installed in 1959, dramatically upgraded in 1964, and was eventually replaced by a mainframe running SYSTRAN in 1970.
Famous quotes containing the words automatic and/or language:
“What we learn for the sake of knowing, we hold; what we learn for the sake of accomplishing some ulterior end, we forget as soon as that end has been gained. This, too, is automatic action in the constitution of the mind itself, and it is fortunate and merciful that it is so, for otherwise our minds would be soon only rubbish-rooms.”
—Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)
“I invented the colors of the vowels!—A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green—I made rules for the form and movement of each consonant, and, and with instinctive rhythms, I flattered myself that I had created a poetic language accessible, some day, to all the senses.”
—Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891)