{"schema":"postcutoff/event@1","as_of":"2026-11-13T13:49:00+01:00","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/1958-07-01-perceptron/","md":"https://postcutoff.com/e/1958-07-01-perceptron/index.md","disclosure":{"written_by":"AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code)","editor":"human editor","policy":"https://postcutoff.com/about/"},"license":null,"id":"1958-07-01-perceptron","date":"1958-07-01","date_precision":"month","short_title":"Frank Rosenblatt's Perceptron, the first trainable neural network","deck":null,"takeaway":"Frank Rosenblatt introduced the perceptron, a neural network that learns its weights from examples, and demonstrated it publicly in 1958; the Mark I Perceptron hardware followed.","category":"research","category_label":"Research","importance":5,"confidence":"medium","status":{"key":"partly","labels":["Partly confirmed"]},"sources":[{"n":1,"title":"The Perceptron (Psychological Review, DOI)","url":"https://doi.org/10.1037/h0042519","type":"paper","group":"primary","domain":"doi.org"},{"n":2,"title":"Wikipedia: Perceptron","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptron","type":"discussion","group":"reactions","domain":"en.wikipedia.org"}],"official":1,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory","US Office of Naval Research"],"title":"Frank Rosenblatt's Perceptron — the first trainable neural network","summary":"Frank Rosenblatt introduced the perceptron, a neural network that learns its weights from examples, and demonstrated it publicly in 1958; the Mark I Perceptron hardware followed.","key_facts":["Paper: 'The Perceptron: A Probabilistic Model for Information Storage and Organization in the Brain', Psychological Review, 1958","Public demonstration with the US Navy in July 1958","Mark I Perceptron machine used a 20x20 photocell input","Minsky & Papert's 1969 book 'Perceptrons' highlighted limits of single-layer nets"],"key_numbers":[],"tags":["neural-networks","learning","hardware"],"science":null,"body_md":"## What happened\n\nRosenblatt's perceptron learned to classify simple visual patterns by adjusting connection weights, first simulated on an IBM 704 and later built as dedicated hardware.\n\n## Why it matters\n\nIt was the first learning neural network and the direct ancestor of modern deep learning; the hype and later backlash around it foreshadowed later AI boom-bust cycles.","disputed":[],"related":[{"id":"1986-10-09-backpropagation","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/1986-10-09-backpropagation/","date":"1986-10-09","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Rumelhart, Hinton & Williams popularize backpropagation","deck":null,"takeaway":"Backpropagation is still how essentially all neural networks, including today's LLMs, are trained.","category":"research","category_label":"Research","importance":5,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":2,"official":1,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["UC San Diego","Carnegie Mellon University"]},{"id":"1943-12-01-mcculloch-pitts-neuron","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/1943-12-01-mcculloch-pitts-neuron/","date":"1943-12-01","date_precision":"month","short_title":"McCulloch & Pitts publish the first mathematical model of a neural network","deck":null,"takeaway":"It is the conceptual ancestor of every neural network used today, linking brain science, logic and computation.","category":"research","category_label":"Research","importance":5,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":2,"official":1,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["University of Illinois","University of Chicago"]}],"people":[],"posts":[],"videos":[],"models":[],"changes":[{"date":"2026-09-29","type":"filed","text":"Created"}],"provenance":{"agents":[{"model":"Claude Opus 5.5","maker":"Anthropic","tool":"Claude Code"}],"filed":"2026-09-29","run":null,"sources_read":null,"updated":"2026-09-29","human_review":null,"version":{"date":"2026-10-07"}},"gaps":[{"model_id":"gpt-6-astra","name":"GPT-6 Astra","cutoff":"2026-04","days_after":null,"in_training_data":true},{"model_id":"claude-opus-5-5","name":"Claude Opus 5.5","cutoff":"2026-06","days_after":null,"in_training_data":true},{"model_id":"gemini-4-hydrogen","name":"Gemini 4 Hydrogen","cutoff":"2026-03","days_after":null,"in_training_data":true},{"model_id":"grok-4-7","name":"Grok 4.7","cutoff":"2026-05","days_after":null,"in_training_data":true}],"short_url":"https://postcutoff.com/s/frank-rosenblatt-perceptron"}