Narrative era overviews and thematic deep dives from the isHistory digital archive. Article track only.https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/en-usCopyright 2026 isHistory Digital Archiveishistory@proton.me (Ishaan)60https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a1-the-ancient-dream-of-artificial-life/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a1-the-ancient-dream-of-artificial-life/From bronze giants to clockwork wonders — before computers, the dream of artificial life lived in the human imagination for thousands of years.Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTai-historyancient-automataphilosophymythologygolemArticlesMinds & MachinesAncient – 1850https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a15-the-rise-of-the-thinking-machine/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a15-the-rise-of-the-thinking-machine/The deep learning revolution from AlexNet to the Transformer — a cascade of breakthroughs where each advance enabled the next. The fastest AI revolution ever.Sun, 26 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTdeep-learningAI-revolutionTransformercomputer-visionNLPArticlesMinds & Machines2012 – 2023https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a16-the-attention-economy-how-the-transformer-changed-everything/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a16-the-attention-economy-how-the-transformer-changed-everything/Why self-attention was the right idea, how it enabled pre-training, and why scaling produced unexpected capabilities. The architecture behind every LLM.Sun, 26 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTTransformerBERTGPTlarge-language-modelspre-trainingArticlesMinds & Machines2017 – 2025https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a10-the-first-ai-winter-when-the-dream-crashed/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a10-the-first-ai-winter-when-the-dream-crashed/Funding collapsed, groups dissolved, careers redirected. The full narrative of AI's first great crisis, told through the people who watched the dream crash.Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTAI winterhistory-of-aifunding-crisisLighthill Reportmachine-translationArticlesMinds & Machines1973 – 1980https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a11-expert-systems-ai-learns-to-be-a-specialist/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a11-expert-systems-ai-learns-to-be-a-specialist/How expert systems made AI commercially viable — from DENDRAL and MYCIN to XCON, and what the approach revealed about the nature of expertise itself.Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTexpert-systemsknowledge-engineeringMYCINXCONcommercial-AIArticlesMinds & Machines1975 – 1990https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a12-japans-billion-dollar-bet-on-ai/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a12-japans-billion-dollar-bet-on-ai/Japan's Fifth Generation Computer Project alarmed the world, spent a decade at ICOT, and quietly failed. The most audacious national AI programme in history.Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTjapan-fifth-generationMITIlogic-programmingPROLOGnational-AI-strategyArticlesMinds & Machines1981 – 1992https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a13-the-second-ai-winter-lightning-strikes-twice/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a13-the-second-ai-winter-lightning-strikes-twice/AI's second great contraction — the fall of expert systems, LISP machines, and DARPA funding, and the neural network underground that kept the faith.Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTAI-winterexpert-systemsLISP-machinesneural-networkshistory-of-AIArticlesMinds & Machines1987 – 1997https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a14-the-godfathers-go-underground/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a14-the-godfathers-go-underground/Hinton, LeCun, and Bengio during the years neural networks were marginalised — the decades of intellectual courage that kept the research programme alive.Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTdeep-learning-historyGeoffrey-HintonYann-LeCunYoshua-Bengioneural-networksArticlesMinds & Machines1987 – 2006https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a7-the-first-ai-programs-teaching-machines-to-play-games/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a7-the-first-ai-programs-teaching-machines-to-play-games/When Samuel's checkers program beat its creator and every demo felt like proof that general machine intelligence was just around the corner.Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTgame-playing-aiArthur Samuelchess-aimachine-learninghistory-of-aiArticlesMinds & Machines1950 – 1997https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a8-eliza-and-the-illusion-of-understanding/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a8-eliza-and-the-illusion-of-understanding/What ELIZA revealed about human psychology, language, and the gap between the appearance of understanding and its reality — questions urgent in the age of LLMs.Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTELIZAnatural-language-processingJoseph Weizenbaumphilosophy-of-mindhuman-computer-interactionArticlesMinds & Machines1966 – 1980https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a9-the-optimists-when-ai-was-going-to-solve-everything/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a9-the-optimists-when-ai-was-going-to-solve-everything/The AI optimists of the 1960s believed machine intelligence was years away. They were right about the destination, spectacularly wrong about the distance.Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTAI optimismhistory-of-aiMarvin MinskyHerbert SimonAI predictions1960s AIArticlesMinds & Machines1960 – 1974https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a4-ada-lovelace-and-the-first-algorithm/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a4-ada-lovelace-and-the-first-algorithm/She wrote the world's first computer program in 1843. A deep dive into Ada Lovelace's Notes on the Analytical Engine and the Bernoulli number algorithm.Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTAda Lovelacealgorithmshistory-of-computingmathematicsanalytical-engineArticlesMinds & Machines1800 – 1850https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a5-alan-turing-the-man-who-imagined-everything/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a5-alan-turing-the-man-who-imagined-everything/From the Turing Machine to Bletchley Park to morphogenesis — how one mind laid the conceptual foundations of an entire civilisation's technology.Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTAlan Turingfoundations-of-computingartificial-intelligencehistory-of-sciencephilosophy-of-mindArticlesMinds & Machines1930 – 1954https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a6-the-summer-that-named-ai/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a6-the-summer-that-named-ai/The 1956 Dartmouth Conference — who was in the room, what they argued about, what they got wrong, and how one summer gave AI its name and its overconfidence.Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTDartmouth Conferencehistory-of-aiJohn McCarthyMarvin Minskyfoundations-of-aiArticlesMinds & Machines1956https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a3-the-philosophers-who-asked-can-machines-think/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a3-the-philosophers-who-asked-can-machines-think/Leibniz dreamed of a calculus of thought, Pascal built the first calculator, Descartes asked if mechanism had limits — questions we still wrestle with.Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTphilosophyhistory-of-ideasfoundationsmind-body-problemdualismArticlesMinds & Machines1600 – 1950https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a2-clockwork-wonders-the-automata-era/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/a2-clockwork-wonders-the-automata-era/European craftsmen built mechanical marvels that walked, wrote and played music. The automata era and the question it forced the world to ask.Sat, 04 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTautomatavaucansonclockworkhistorymechanical-lifeArticlesMinds & Machines1600 – 1800