1960s - 1970s: Expert Systems Gain Attendance The concept of expert systems dates back to the 1960s but first gained prominence in the 1970s. Conclusive for this development were the insights of the Stanford University professor Edward Feigenbaum, who in 1977 demonstrated that the problem-solving capacity of a computer program rather is a result of the knowledge it posses, than of the applied programming techniques and formalisms. Expert systems were designed to mimic the knowledge and reasoning capabilities of a human specialist in a given domain by using (top down) artificial intelligence techniques. Made possible by the large storage capacity of the computers at the time, expert systems had the potential to interpret statistics and formulate rules. An initial use of expert systems was to diagnose and treat human physical disorders, but as its applications in the market place were extensive over the course of the following years they were also employed in fields such as stock market forecast, taxation, chemistry, and geology.

TEXTBLOCK 1/1 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611663/100438659454

RSA The best known of the two-key cryptosystems developed in the mid-1980s is the Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) cryptoalgorithm, which was first published in April, 1977. Since that time, the algorithm has been employed in the most widely-used Internet electronic communications encryption program, Pretty Good Privacy (PGP). It is also employed in both the Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Explorer web browsing programs in their implementations of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), and by Mastercard and VISA in the Secure Electronic Transactions (SET) protocol for credit card transactions.

INDEXCARD, 1/1