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An Afterword to "Rise of the Self-Replicators": Placing John A. Etzler, Frigyes Karinthy, Fred Stahl, and Others in the Early History of Thought About Self-Reproducing Machines
  
  Tim Taylor
2024

Abstract
This article is an afterword to the book "Rise of the Self-Replicators: Early Visions of Machines, AI and Robots That Can Reproduce and Evolve", coauthored by Tim Taylor and Alan Dorin (2020). The book covered the early history of thought about self-reproducing and evolving machines, from initial speculations in the 17th century up to the early 1960s (from which point onward the more recent history is already well covered elsewhere). This article supplements the material discussed in the book by presenting several relevant sources that have come to the author’s attention since the book was published. The most significant additions to the history are from the German-born, 19th-century inventor and utopian John Adolphus Etzler in the 1830s-1840s, the Hungarian author and satirist Frigyes Karinthy in 1916, and the U.S. mathematician and computer scientist Fred Stahl in 1960.

 
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Reference
<span id="taylor2024afterword">Taylor, T. (2024). An Afterword to "Rise of the Self-Replicators": Placing John A. Etzler, Frigyes Karinthy, Fred Stahl, and Others in the Early History of Thought About Self-Reproducing Machines. <i>Artificial Life</i>, <i>30</i>(1), 91–105. https://doi.org/10.1162/artl_a_00424</span>

BibTeX
@article{taylor2024afterword,
  author = {Taylor, Tim},
  title = {An Afterword to "Rise of the Self-Replicators": Placing John A. Etzler, Frigyes Karinthy, Fred Stahl, and Others in the Early History of Thought About Self-Reproducing Machines},
  journal = {Artificial Life},
  year = {2024},
  volume = {30},
  number = {1},
  pages = {91-105},
  publisher = {{MIT} Press Journals},
  doi = {10.1162/artl_a_00424},
  issn = {1530-9185},
  category = {journal},
  keywords = {history, selfrep}
}

   
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<div class="overflow-scroll"><span id="taylor2020what">Taylor, T. (2020). <b>What Am I For? Self-Purpose and Self-Reproduction in Rossum’s Universal Robots (Samoúčelnost a samoreprodukce u Rossumových univerzálních robotů)</b>. In J. Čejková (Ed.), <i>ROBOT 100: Sto rozumů</i> (pp. 178–180). Prague: Kosmas.</span></div>

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    <pre>@incollection{taylor2020what,
  author = {Taylor, Tim},
  title = {What Am I For? Self-Purpose and Self-Reproduction in Rossum's Universal Robots (Samoúčelnost a samoreprodukce u Rossumových univerzálních robotů)},
  booktitle = {ROBOT 100: Sto rozumů},
  editor = {\v{C}ejkov\'{a}, Jitka},
  year = {2020},
  pages = {178-180},
  isbn = {978-80-7592-062-1},
  publisher = {Kosmas},
  address = {Prague},
  category = {chapter},
  keywords = {selfrep, agency},
  note = {Centenary edition of Karel \v{C}apek's Rossum's Universal Robots. In Czech.}
}
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<div class="overflow-scroll"><span id="taylor2020rise">Taylor, T., &amp; Dorin, A. (2020). <i><b>Rise of the Self-Replicators: Early Visions of Machines, AI and Robots That Can Reproduce and Evolve</b></i>. Cham: Springer.</span></div>

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    <pre>@book{taylor2020rise,
  title = {Rise of the Self-Replicators: Early Visions of Machines, AI and Robots That Can Reproduce and Evolve},
  author = {Taylor, Tim and Dorin, Alan},
  publisher = {Springer},
  year = {2020},
  isbn = {978-3-030-48233-6},
  address = {Cham},
  category = {book},
  keywords = {history, selfrep}
}
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<div class="overflow-scroll"><span id="taylor2018past">Taylor, T., &amp; Dorin, A. (2018). <b>Past Visions of Artificial Futures: One Hundred and Fifty Years under the Spectre of Evolving Machines</b>. In T. Ikegami, N. Virgo, O. Witkowski, M. Oka, R. Suzuki, &amp; H. Iizuka (Eds.), <i>ALIFE 2018: Proceedings of the Artificial Life Conference 2018</i> (pp. 91–98). https://doi.org/10.1162/isal_a_00022</span></div>

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    <pre>@inproceedings{taylor2018past,
  author = {Taylor, Tim and Dorin, Alan},
  title = {Past Visions of Artificial Futures: One Hundred and Fifty Years under the Spectre of Evolving Machines},
  booktitle = {ALIFE 2018: Proceedings of the Artificial Life Conference 2018},
  editor = {Ikegami, Takashi and Virgo, Nathaniel and Witkowski, Olaf and Oka, Mizuki and Suzuki, Reiji and Iizuka, Hiroyuki},
  year = {2018},
  publisher = {{MIT} Press},
  pages = {91--98},
  doi = {10.1162/isal_a_00022},
  category = {conference},
  keywords = {history, selfrep}
}
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<div class="overflow-scroll"><span id="taylor2014digital">Taylor, T., Dorin, A., &amp; Korb, K. (2014). <b>Digital Genesis: Computers, Evolution and Artificial Life</b>. <i>Presented at the 7th Munich-Sydney-Tilburg Philosophy of Science Conference: Evolutionary Thinking, University of Sydney, 20-22 March 2014</i>. Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/abs/1512.02100</span></div>

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    <pre>@article{taylor2014digital,
  author = {Taylor, Tim and Dorin, Alan and Korb, Kevin},
  title = {Digital Genesis: Computers, Evolution and Artificial Life},
  journal = {Presented at the 7th Munich-Sydney-Tilburg Philosophy of Science Conference: Evolutionary Thinking, University of Sydney, 20-22 March 2014},
  month = mar,
  year = {2014},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/1512.02100},
  category = {workshop},
  keywords = {history}
}
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<div class="overflow-scroll"><span id="taylor2003evolving">Taylor, T. (2003). <b>Evolving Interaction in Artificial Systems: An historical overview and future directions</b>. In P. McOwan, K. Dautenhahn, &amp; C. L. Nehaniv (Eds.), <i>Abstracts from the Evolvability and Interaction Symposium, held at Queen Mary, University of London, UK, in October 2003</i>. University of Hertfordshire Computer Science Technical Report No. 393.</span></div>

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    <pre>@incollection{taylor2003evolving,
  author = {Taylor, Tim},
  title = {Evolving Interaction in Artificial Systems: An historical overview and future directions},
  booktitle = {Abstracts from the Evolvability and Interaction Symposium, held at Queen Mary, University of London, UK, in October 2003},
  publisher = {University of Hertfordshire Computer Science Technical Report No.~393},
  year = {2003},
  month = oct,
  editor = {McOwan, Peter and Dautenhahn, Kerstin and Nehaniv, Chrystopher L.},
  category = {workshop},
  keywords = {evoca, history, oee}
}
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<div class="overflow-scroll"><span id="mcmullin2001who">McMullin, B., Taylor, T., &amp; von Kamp, A. (2001). <b>Who Needs Genomes?</b> <i>Proceedings of the Atlantic Symposium on Computational Biology and Genome Information Systems and Technology, CBGIST 2001</i>, 250–254. Duke University, USA.</span></div>

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    <pre>@inproceedings{mcmullin2001who,
  author = {McMullin, Barry and Taylor, Tim and {von Kamp}, Axel},
  title = {Who Needs Genomes?},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Atlantic Symposium on Computational Biology and Genome Information Systems and Technology, CBGIST 2001},
  year = {2001},
  pages = {250-254},
  month = mar,
  address = {Duke University, USA},
  category = {conference},
  keywords = {selfrep}
}
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<div class="overflow-scroll"><span id="taylor2000some">Taylor, T. (2000). <b>Some Representational and Ecological Aspects of Evolvability</b>. In C. L. Nehaniv (Ed.), <i>Proceedings of the Evolvability Workshop at the the Seventh International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems (Artificial Life 7)</i> (pp. 41–44). Retrieved from http://homepages.herts.ac.uk/ comqcln/al7ev/cnts.html</span></div>

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    <pre>@inproceedings{taylor2000some,
  author = {Taylor, Tim},
  title = {Some Representational and Ecological Aspects of Evolvability},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Evolvability Workshop at the the Seventh International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems (Artificial Life 7)},
  year = {2000},
  editor = {Nehaniv, Chrystopher L.},
  pages = {41-44},
  url = {http://homepages.herts.ac.uk/~comqcln/al7ev/cnts.html},
  month = aug,
  category = {workshop},
  keywords = {selfrep, oee}
}
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<div class="overflow-scroll"><span id="taylor1999selfreproduction">Taylor, T. (1999). <b>On Self-Reproduction and Evolvability</b>. In D. Floreano, J.-D. Nicoud, &amp; F. Mondada (Eds.), <i>Advances in Artificial Life. ECAL 1999</i> (pp. 94–103). https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48304-7_15</span></div>

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    <pre>@inproceedings{taylor1999selfreproduction,
  title = {On Self-Reproduction and Evolvability},
  author = {Taylor, Tim},
  year = {1999},
  booktitle = {Advances in Artificial Life. ECAL 1999},
  series = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science},
  volume = {1674},
  pages = {94-103},
  editor = {Floreano, Dario and Nicoud, Jean-Daniel and Mondada, Francesco},
  doi = {10.1007/3-540-48304-7_15},
  publisher = {Springer},
  address = {Berlin},
  category = {conference},
  keywords = {selfrep, cosmos}
}
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<div class="overflow-scroll"><span id="taylor1999artificial">Taylor, T. J. (1999). <i><b>From Artificial Evolution to Artificial Life</b></i> (PhD thesis). School of Informatics, College of Science and Engineering, University of Edinburgh.</span></div>

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    <pre>@phdthesis{taylor1999artificial,
  author = {Taylor, Timothy John},
  title = {From Artificial Evolution to Artificial Life},
  school = {School of Informatics, College of Science and Engineering, University of Edinburgh},
  year = {1999},
  uri = {http://hdl.handle.net/1842/361},
  category = {dissertation},
  keywords = {selfrep, oee, cosmos}
}
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<div class="overflow-scroll"><span id="taylor1997studying">Taylor, T., &amp; Hallam, J. (1997). <b>Studying Evolution with Self-Replicating Computer Programs</b>. In P. Husbands &amp; I. Harvey (Eds.), <i>Fourth European Conference on Artificial Life</i> (pp. 550–559). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.</span></div>

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    <pre>@inproceedings{taylor1997studying,
  title = {Studying Evolution with Self-Replicating Computer Programs},
  author = {Taylor, Tim and Hallam, John},
  pages = {550--559},
  booktitle = {Fourth European Conference on Artificial Life},
  editor = {Husbands, Phil and Harvey, Inman},
  publisher = {MIT Press},
  address = {Cambridge, MA},
  isbn = {0262581574},
  year = {1997},
  category = {conference},
  keywords = {cosmos, selfrep}
}
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