Description

Claude Elwood Shannon demonstrates his electric mouse maze. The system employs machine learning to 'teach' the mouse to solve the maze through trial and error.

Original caption: "Claude Shannon's electronic mouse first learns the intracacies of the maze by trial and error and the second time around remembers the route."

Claude Shannon and his maze solving mouse. Photo by Charles Eames 901 Washington Boulevard Venice CA. used p. 149 Computer Perspective. CE1540D. Bell Labs Release: "Dr. Claude E. Shannon, Bell Telephone Laboratories mathematician sets his electrical mouse down in a maze through which it will thread its way to a "piece of cheese" in a distant corner. The "cheese" is really an electrical terminal. The mouse bumps into walls, backs up, turns, and explores the baffling passageways until it finds the cheese. Then by means of a "super-memory" it will begin at the original point and without a single false move proceed directly to the goal in 12 to 15 seconds. The mouse uses for its "brain" some of the same kind of switching relays found in dial telephone systems. It was designed to provide fundamental knowledge which will help improve telephone service."