The Computer Church: The .

Aegis 1956 (Yearbook)

This is the 1956 yearbook for Dartmouth College. The earliest Artificial Intelligence conference in the USA was held at Dartmouth in 1956.

John McCarthy was the host for this conference and he is listed in the faculty section as having just arrived at Dartmouth in 1955. However, he seems to have missed the memo on the faculty picture so he is not pictured with his colleagues from the Math and Astronomy Department.

However, Dr. McCarthy is mentioned in the text summary of the department,

Those interested in the high level application of coin flipping and normal distributions can work with Laurie Snell while Gerry Thompson can teach you the proper game theory for simplified bridge. For those who want to program a computer or predict the storm of November 1, 1950, John McCarthy can show you the way.

We are not sure what the reference is to predicting a 1950 storm. It could be a swipe at "predicting" a fictional storm 6 years later or it might refer to Great Appalachian Storm of November 1950 which occurred at the end of November in 1956 and reached New Hampshire with winds of over 100 miles per hour.