Inventor of the first translating machine
Georges Artsrouni is a French-Armenian engineer, inventor. He is the author of one of the oldest machine translation devices known to history . He was educated in Saint Petersburg . He settled in France since 1922.
Artsruni probably created his first device in 1932 and patented it on July 22, 1933 under the name « Mechanical brain » ( cerveau mécanique ). In the same year, he started building the second machine, which in 1937 was awarded the main prize ( diplome de grand prix ) in the « Mechanography » section during the great exhibition in Paris. After Artzrun’s death, the device was acquired and is still preserved by the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Paris.
Artzrun’s translation machine was a mechanical (not electronic) device that accepted input via a keyboard, translated text word by word by looking up word translations in built-in dictionaries, and printed the translated text on paper. He could translate it into four languages.
