Another machine that we can foresee would be used for translating from one language to any other. We can call it an _automatic translator_. Suppose that you want to say “How much?” in Swedish. You dial into the machine “How much?” and press the button “Swedish,” and the machine will promptly write out “Hur mycket?” for you. It also will pronounce it, if you wish, for there would be little difficulty in recording on magnetic tape the pronunciation of the word as spoken by a good speaker of the language. The machine could be set to repeat the pronunciation several times so that the student could really learn the sound. He could learn it better, probably, by hearing it and trying to say it than he could by using any set of written symbols. Automatic Typist We now come to a possible machine that uses a new principle. This principle is that of being able to _recognize_ signs. This machine would perceive writing on a piece of paper and recognize that all the _a_’s that appear on the paper are cases of _a_, and that all the _b_’s that appear on it are instances of _b_, and so forth. The machine could then control an electric typewriter and copy the marks that it sees. The first stage of this machine would be one in which only printed characters of a high degree of likeness could be recognized. In later stages, handwriting, even rather illegible handwriting, might be recognizable by the machine. We can call it an _automatic typist_. The elements of the automatic typist would be the following: 1. _Phototubes_ (electronic tubes sensitive to the brightness of light), which could sense the difference between black and white (these already exist). 2. A memory of the shapes of 52 letters, 10 digits, and punctuation marks. Fine distinctions would be required of this memory in some cases—like the difference between the numeral 5 and the capital letter S. 3. A control that would cause the machine to _tune_ itself, so that a good matching between the marks it observed and the shapes it remembered would be reached. 4. A _triggering control_ so that, when the machine had reached good enough matching between its observations and its memory, the machine would proceed to identify the marks, read them, and transfer them. 5. An electric typewriter, which would respond to the transferred instructions. (This also already exists.)