The promise grew faster than the machine

The Perceptron could learn a narrow task from examples. Rosenblatt believed the same basic idea might eventually do much more.

In July 1958, The New York Times reported that the Navy expected this early project to lead to a machine that could one day "walk, talk, see, write, reproduce itself and be conscious of its existence."

The actual achievement was much smaller. The Perceptron was learning to separate simple visual patterns.

That was real progress. It was also a long way from a machine with a human mind.

The distance between the machine and the promise shaped what happened next.