Neural Networks in the 1940s

Sometimes everything comes together, like finding out about a bit of history you weren't aware of before.

Today I watched this youtube video of a chat with Marc Andressen where it was mentioned how the possibility of artificial neural networks was already known in the early days of computing. In a strange turn of events I sat down later to continue reading a book I'm reading (The Dream Machine by Mitchell Waldrop) and right away stumbled across a passage mentioning exactly the same thing. Clearly a development a long time in the making.