Machine translation of languages. Inscribed by Booth

New York: Wiley/Tech Press, 1955. Locke, William N. (1909- ) and Booth, Andrew, eds. Machine translation of languages. New York: John Wiley & Sons; London: Chapman & Hall, ©1955. Original blue cloth, buff printed dust-jacket (extremities a bit worn, faint spotting). Small dampstain on front free endpaper. Inscribed on the front free endpaper: "With the compliments of Andrew D. Booth." xii, 243 [1]pp. 229 x 147 mm. First Edition. The first book on the application of computers to language translation, co-edited by computer pioneer A. D. Booth, an important early contributor to the development of computer memory technology. The book's historical introduction, by Booth and Locke, represents the first history of machine translation. The book also contains a reprint of Weaver's twelve-page memorandum entitled "Translation," written on 15 July 1949 and circulated privately to about two hundred people; Weaver's memorandum "was the first suggestion that most had ever seen that language translation by computer techniques might be possible" (p. 15n). Also included is Erwin Reifler's paper, "The mechanical determination of meaning," in which he made the prescient claim that "all human pre-editorial work, which I had previously considered a conditio sine qua non, could be completely mechanized" (p. 137). Pages 227-36 contain an annotated bibliography of the subject, most of which consists of mimeographed articles. Origins of Cyberspace 497 (this copy).