As I was reading Audrey Watters’s Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning, recently published by MIT Press, the word “landmark” kept occurring to me.[1] This is a landmark book. It is ...

Long before the advent of personal computers, inventors and researchers created what they called “teaching machines” in hopes of revolutionizing education. Some of these creations date back to the ...

28th February 1957: Project leader on Electronic Reading Automaton George Norrie in front of the scanner of the Solartron Reading Machine. (Photo by Ron Burton/Keystone/Getty Images) It’s axiomic ...

To its 5,000 salesmen across the U.S., Grolier Inc., publisher of America’s oldest encyclopedia, last week handed out an odd-looking new product to sell door to door. A green, windowed, sheet-metal ...

Is the “teaching machine” an ugly ogre? Does it promise new blessing or new burden for the Church’s task in the world? Whichever your answer, the arrival of the teaching machine for auto-instruction ...