[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Alamos_chess#Los_Alamos_tr...
The Ajedrecista had been around since 1912, so I would expect somebody must have been defeated by it in the years before 1951.
>The blizzard is worsening. The announcement rings out that the campus is closing early due to the weather. The missing secretary’s voice still eludes me. For now, the history of talking machines remains one sided. It’s a silence that haunts me as I trudge home through the muffled, snowbound streets.
> My secretary watched me work on this program over a long period of time. One day she asked to be permitted to talk with the system. Of course, she knew she was talking to a machine. Yet, after I watched her type in a few sentences she turned to me and said: ‘Would you mind leaving the room, please?’
—and wonders whether this story is true, and if so, what was Weizenbaum's secretary's name. It's not immediately clear to me that we should assume there was a secretary at all; Weizenbaum might have anonymized not only the participant's name but also her profession (and maybe her sex).
The author says she made an effort to find out who was Weizenbaum's secretary circa 1966, but was (completely?) unsuccessful:
> I work my way through Weizenbaum’s yellowed papers. Surely, among the transcripts, code print outs, letters and notebooks there will be evidence? There are some clues, reference to a secretary in letters to and from Weizenbaum. But no name.
> I broaden my hunt to administrative records. I look in department papers and the collections of Weizenbaum’s workplace, Project MAC – the hallowed centre of computing innovation at MIT. No luck. I contact the HR office and MIT’s alumni group. I stretch the patience of the ever-generous archivists. As my last day arrives, I still hear only silence.
The Weizenbaum archives are partially online. On page 149 of this 150-page collection labeled "SLIP, 1963 - 1967" ( https://dome.mit.edu/handle/1721.3/201706 ), it's indicated that on November 5, 1963, someone with the initials "jep" was taking dictation from JW.
Now, a single set of initials isn't remotely "identification" of JW's secretary (let alone identifying the participant from Weizenbaum's story, year unknown). But I feel like as a reward for reading all that, at least the author could have mentioned that she'd found those initials, and worked that into the tale she wanted to spin. As it is, it feels like she cared strictly more about spinning the tale than about finding the identity of the secretary. And if she doesn't care, why should the reader?
Also see
https://sites.google.com/view/elizaarchaeology/blog/weizenba...
