Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!uw-june!pattis
From: pattis@june.cs.washington.edu (Richard Pattis)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Why 32 bits?
Summary: Samuel not Simon
Message-ID: <9036@june.cs.washington.edu>
Date: 18 Aug 89 03:36:39 GMT
References: <355@torsqnt.UUCP> <3490016@wdl1.UUCP> <1710@ibmpa.UUCP>
Organization: U of Washington, Computer Science, Seattle
Lines: 8

> Apocryphally, and perhaps even in truth, Herbert Simon and his checkers-
> playing program influenced the choice of 36 bits. ...

Art Samuel is the one with the checker playing program at IBM (Christopher
Strachey did one in Europe). Newell and Simon did Chess (as well as Alex
Bernstein at IBM) .  A bunch of papers were published in 1958 and 1959: see
"Computers and Computation" published -and readings from- Scientific American
and see Feigenbaum and Feldman, "Computers and Thought").