Blog

25 Jan 2025, David M. Berry and Sarah Ciston.

The reconstruction of historical software presents fascinating challenges at the intersection of computer science, digital preservation, and software archaeology. In recent work reconstructing Joseph Weizenbaum's original ELIZA from 1965, there were unique difficulties that highlight important questions about software preservation and historical authenticity.

16 Jan 2025 - The Software Toolworks’ ELIZA by Walt Bilofsky, Guest Post. 

ELIZA played a key role in the journey of the pioneering software publishing company The Software Toolworks from a one-man shop in a converted garage to a publicly traded company with over 600 employees. Here’s how it went.

29 Dec 2024 - The DOCTOR script: a work in progress by Anthony Hay: 

There are three known contemporaneous scripts compatible with the version of ELIZA described in Joseph Weizenbaum’s 1966 Communications of the ACM paper...

20 Nov 2024 - Guest Post: Edmund Berkeley and Joseph Weizenbaum by Rebecca Roach: 

My own interest in ELIZA, aside from it being the most famous of talking machines, comes from the fact that we are more likely to be familiar with the stories about this feminised program than we are with many real women in computer history...

22 July 2024 - ELIZA Version Variation by David M. Berry: 

The ELIZA source code is not a finished artefact and suggests multiple versions were developed each with distinctive functionality...

12 June 2024 - Judging Computation by David M. Berry: 

The fear that “judgement” mimicked by a computer program could become decisive was an important question for Weizenbaum...

20 Mar 2024 - Weizenbaum's Secretary by David M. Berry and Sarah Ciston: 

Who was the unnamed secretary that talked to ELIZA that Weizenbaum referred to in his published work in 1966 and 1976...

15 Mar 2024 - Talking to ELIZA on an ASR 33 Teletype by Anthony Hay: 

Getting ELIZA to interact through an ASR 33 teletype connected to a serial port on a computer...

11 JAN 2024 - A Certain Counting Mechanism by Anthony Hay: 

How Joseph Weizenbaum’s ELIZA actually works is now actually possible to understand in detail with the source code at hand...