Brief History of Neural Networks

Having given a basic picture of how an ANN operates, we now give a short history of the development of ANNs. This will serve to explain why it has taken 40-50 years for this field to blossom. Along the way we will introduce some of the important people who were responsible for the beginnings, initial development, subsequent decline, and finally, revitalization of ANNs. We will certainly not mention all the important workers no slight is intended to any of them. The reader who is interested in the historical aspects of ANNs is referred to the appendix of Simpson s book.  

In 1982 John Hopfield, a physicist at California Institute of Technology, presented a paper f to the National Academy of Sciences that was the first paper concerning ANNs this group had heard since the 1960s. Most observers credit Hopfield s enthusiasm and clarity of presentation with prompting a significant number of researchers to become interested in ANNs once again. 

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