National Recognition

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Image courtesy of Alfred Gillett Trust

Stephen Fry

TBA

A Commemorative Coin (Designed with AI)

 john Clark

Government Recognition

In the year 1832, amidst the fervor of the British Industrial Revolution, a man by the name of John Clark embarked on a pursuit that would span more than a decade. In quiet solitude he labored over a creation he dubbed the "Eureka." At last, in 1845, Clark unveiled his enigmatic invention to the public at London's Egyptian Hall. Advertisements heralded the wonder of "a machine for making Latin Verses”: Clark had been building a poem writing machine. The Eureka did not merely replicate poetry as a self-playing piano does with music; it generated millions of original compositions, each “conceived in the mind of the machine” as Clark put it, a process he termed "Kaleidoscopic Evolution.” Clark was describing thinking machines, generative ones that could write and create. An imaginative leap, too fanciful for Clark’s contermpary Charles Babbage who’d call him "as much a curiosity as his machine.” For two centuries, John Clark has been regarded as an intriguing, albeit eccentric, engineer and inventor, with airbeds and waterproof raincoats as his most practical contributions to society. His poem-writing machine was largely dismissed as a whimsical novelty born of a singular obsession. When the Eureka was first revealed, one writer playfully imagined a future replete with eureka machines for every conceivable purpose: "the brain shall be steel and brass, and its pulses oil and clockwork, and man shall only need a watch-key to think large thoughts and imagine eloquent phrases and witty fancies." This prescient prediction foresaw a time when newspapers would be written, composed, and printed by machines, with the Eureka as the harbinger of a new age of generative creativity. With the recent ascendancy of generative AI systems, the long-ago prophecy of an age of Eurekas has come to fruition. Today, John Clark's once peculiar vision seems increasingly prescient. Much like Charles Babbage's pioneering work in computing, Clark's contributions to the field of generative machines warrant recognition in the annals of British and global computing history. Despite his visionary status, John Clark remains obscure enough to lack even a Wikipedia page (though his machine has one). It is high time that this campaign seeks to rectify this oversight, securing for Clark his rightful place in history as a quintessentially eccentric British innovator.

Images courtesy of Alfred Gillett Trust and Mike Sharples

Mike Sharples,  Emeritus Professor, Open University

CAMPAIGN GOALS

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International Coverage

In the year 1832, amidst the fervor of the British Industrial Revolution, a man by the name of John Clark embarked on a pursuit that would span more than a decade. In quiet solitude he labored over a creation he dubbed the "Eureka." At last, in 1845, Clark unveiled his enigmatic invention to the public at London's Egyptian Hall. Advertisements heralded the wonder of "a machine for making Latin Verses”: Clark had been building a poem writing machine. The Eureka did not merely replicate poetry as a self-playing piano does with music; it generated millions of original compositions, each “conceived in the mind of the machine” a process Clark described as "Kaleidoscopic Evolution.” For two centuries, John Clark has been regarded as an intriguing, albeit eccentric, engineer and inventor, with airbeds and waterproof raincoats as his most practical contributions to society. His poem-writing machine was largely dismissed as a whimsical novelty born of a singular obsession. When the Eureka was first revealed, one writer playfully imagined a future replete with eureka machines for every conceivable purpose: "the brain shall be steel and brass, and its pulses oil and clockwork, and man shall only need a watch-key to think large thoughts and imagine eloquent phrases and witty fancies." This prescient prediction foresaw a time when newspapers would be written, composed, and printed by machines, with the Eureka as the harbinger of a new age of generative creativity. With the recent ascendancy of generative AI systems, the long-ago prophecy of an age of Eurekas has come to fruition. Today, John Clark's once peculiar vision seems increasingly prescient. Much like Charles Babbage's pioneering work in computing, Clark's contributions to the field of generative machines warrant recognition in the annals of British and global history. Despite his visionary status, John Clark remains obscure enough to lack even a Wikipedia page (though his machine has one). It is high time that this campaign seeks to rectify this oversight, securing for Clark his rightful place in history as a quintessentially eccentric British innovator.

Images courtesy of Alfred Gillett Trust and Mike Sharples

READING LIST

Commemorative Coin (Designed with AI)

Image courtesy of Alfred Gillett Trust