Wallace Feurzeig





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About Wallace Feurzeig
Quoting from Answer.com:


 * Wally Feurzeig is an inventor of the LOGO programming language, and a well-known researcher in Artificial Intelligence.


 * During the early 1960s, BBN had become a major center of computer science research and innovative applications. Wally Feurzeig joined the firm in 1962 to work with its newly available facilities in the Artificial Intelligence Department, one of the earliest AI organizations. His colleagues were actively engaged in some of the pioneering AI work in computer pattern recognition, natural language understanding, theorem proving, LISP language development and robot problem solving.


 * Much of this work was done in collaboration with distinguished researchers at MIT such as Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy, who were regular BBN consultants during the early 1960s. Other groups at BBN were doing original work in cognitive science, instructional research and man-computer communication. Some of the first work on knowledge representation (semantic networks), question-answering, interactive graphics and computer-aided instruction was actively underway. J. C. R. Licklider was the spiritual as well as the scientific leader of much of this work, championing the cause of on-line interaction during an era when almost all computation was being done via batch processing.


 * Wally's initial focus was on expanding the intellectual capabilities of existing teaching systems. This led to the first "intelligent" computer-assisted instruction (CAI) system, MENTOR, which employed production rules to support problem-solving interactions in medical diagnosis and other decision-making domains. In 1965, Wally organized the BBN Educational Technology Department to further the development of computer methods for improving learning and teaching, and the focus of his work then shifted to the investigation of programming languages as educational environments. This shift was partly due to two recent technological advances: the invention of computer time-sharing and the development of the first high-level "conversational" programming language.