So the introduction to the book, Herbert Simon: The Bounds of Reason in Modern America by Hunter Crowther-Heyck begins with an anecdote about the computer program, "Logic Theorist" that Simon and Al Newell invented. It was created in late 1955 and first run on a computer in August of '56.
Many thought it proved the existence of AI, or Artificial Intelligence. It was designed to prove the theorems of russeell and Whiteheads' Principia Mathematica a book that revolutionized the field of logic. It plugged and chugged from only the basic axioms--and theorems it proved through its thinking through those axioms, "even proving one theorem more elegantly than had Russell and Whitehead."
Bertrand Russel is told about this and in response says, "I am delighted to know that Principia Mathematica can no be done by machinery. I [only] wish I had known of this possibility before we both wasted ten years doing it by hand."
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