Expert system in 1832

The reader at homeoscope.ru is immediately surprised to learn that in 1832 a Russian nobleman named Semyon Nikolayevich Korsakov filed a request to the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg to consider his methods and inventions, among which there were five machines on punched cards encoding knowledge bases and algorithms for simple comparison of objects by attributes.

Of course, the computing power of Korsakov’s machines cannot be compared with the inventions of his contemporary Charles Babbage (who, as an article in the Russian- language Wikipedia says , in the same 1832 became a foreign corresponding member of the same Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg), capable of fairly complex mathematical calculations.

Nevertheless, Korsakov’s idea of ​​automating medical diagnosis and prescription deserves, I believe, attention.