This one was very difficult for me, in part because it has been written about heavily in the modern day. This may not have been the best question for this format—but I made it work.
(As a reminder, sources may be included in the alt-text of images for space and flow reasons.)
In the years before the device’s invention, Shannon became known for his interest in chess-playing machines, even writing an article for Scientific American about them in 1950.
https://www.paradise.caltech.edu/ist4/lectures/shannonchess1950.pdf
While there, Minsky developed a variety of machines—facilitated by a budding relationship with Shannon. “We hit it off because both Shannon and I were addicted to making interesting new mechanical devices,” Minsky said in an oral history.
Sounds like a pretty great internship. During that same oral history, he described the exact process of developing the machine.
Spencer Gifts later sold a variant that actually made the useless device useful—it turned the device into a bank that grabbed your quarters and stored them.
Not bad.
There’s a book about him, in English, on Google Books, if you want to learn more. It’s called Making Air Visible or Air Made Visible.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Air_Made_Visible/HdNo-x0-wmUC?hl=en&gbpv=0
The machine has periodically been mentioned in media, most notably making an appearance in Make Magazine in 2010.
https://archive.org/details/make-magazine/Make%20Magazine%20-%20Vol%2023/page/94/mode/2up
In terms of more recent articles about the device, I recommend this NYT essay from 2016:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-the-useless-machine.html
Finally, I will note, because it’s important, that Minsky (and MIT in general) had a direct association with Jeffrey Epstein that drew scrutiny near the end of his life.
It should be noted that Mével’s interest in the Useless Machine is not as someone merely curious—his company actually remade their own version, called la machine, which they sell here:
Anyway, that’s the thread. Find this one an interesting topic? Want me to do another dive? Commission one here: https://ko-fi.com/c/caf0972c99
Oh, yeah, subscribe to @tedium: https://tedium.co/
Spencer Gifts later sold a variant that actually made the useless device useful—it turned the device into a bank that grabbed your quarters and stored them.
Not bad.
There’s a book about him, in English, on Google Books, if you want to learn more. It’s called Making Air Visible or Air Made Visible.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Air_Made_Visible/HdNo-x0-wmUC?hl=en&gbpv=0
The machine has periodically been mentioned in media, most notably making an appearance in Make Magazine in 2010.
https://archive.org/details/make-magazine/Make%20Magazine%20-%20Vol%2023/page/94/mode/2up
In terms of more recent articles about the device, I recommend this NYT essay from 2016:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-the-useless-machine.html
Finally, I will note, because it’s important, that Minsky (and MIT in general) had a direct association with Jeffrey Epstein that drew scrutiny near the end of his life.
It should be noted that Mével’s interest in the Useless Machine is not as someone merely curious—his company actually remade their own version, called la machine, which they sell here:
Anyway, that’s the thread. Find this one an interesting topic? Want me to do another dive? Commission one here: https://ko-fi.com/c/caf0972c99
Oh, yeah, subscribe to @tedium: https://tedium.co/
Ernie Smith
Lauren Weinstein
slash
Paula Gordon