Racter (1984): The Computer That Wrote a Book
In 1984, a program called Racter, written in BASIC on a Z80 micro with 64K of RAM, generated an entire book of prose and poetry, 'The Policeman's Beard Is Half-Constructed.' The book was proofread for spelling but otherwise unedited. Racter could conjugate verbs, pluralize nouns, and string words together using syntax directives, producing output that was new, unknowable, and apparently thoughtful. This UbuWeb page presents the full text as a PDF, preserving a landmark in early AI-generated literature.
It is crazy 'thinking,' I grant you, but 'thinking' that is expressed in perfect English.
- gxd
A relative had a Mac running Racter back in the day. I was a child but I played with it quite a bit. I found it magical. I thought I was looking at ChatGPT, but obviously it was a trick. A few years later I realized that Racter wasn't that good, but I've always wanted a "Racter that actually works"... It was a long wait, but we got it for better or worse!
- josefritzishere
I've never heard of this before. This is wild. More here: https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=3351
- nom
fun fact, there was a shareware clone of Racter released in 1991, called Claude
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/areas...