Scope Inc. of Falls Church, Virginia, has developed SOCRATES, an 
adaptive learning machine. If for no other reason its acronym, SOCRATES, 
warrants some discussion since it would appear that considerable time must 
have been spent in its formulation. It stands for Scope's Own Conditioned- 
Reflex, Automatic Trainable Electronic System - - certainly a mouth full 
in any language. Its title, of course, implies great wisdom and capability. 
Its inventors consider that it will have considerable use in both photo 
interpretation and cartography 9), 
Scope has also carried its system design a bit further and has 
designed and tested an image prenormalizer whose function is the removal 
of translation and rotation of images which seriously affect detection 
accuracy of images fed into SOCRATES after its initial conditioning >. 
Certainly one of the largest researchers into the various aspects 
of automation in photo interpretation has been Cornell Aeronautical Laboratories 
Inc., of Buffalo, New York. Over a period of years they have established 
(8) 
a rather extensive and flexible data processing facility for conducting 
research and development in the fields of signal and data processing, 
pattern recognition, and image processing. While some equipment may be con- 
sidered general purpose such as their IBM System 360/65 complex, much of it 
is also one-of-a-kind as is their Pattern Recognition Computer. 
"SOCRATES - Adaptive Image Processor", R. W. Van Duinen, R. F. Owens, 
and L. D. Sinnamon, Jr., Scope Inc., paper presented at SPIE Computerized 
Imaging Techniques Seminar, Washington, D.C., 26 June 1967. 
"A note on the Theory of SOCRATES", Scope Inc., Falls Church, Va., 1966. 
"Target Detection, Prenormalization and Learning Machines", M. R. Uffelman, 
Scope Inc., Falis Church, Va., 1967. 
"Pattern Recognition and Image Processing Facilities", Cornell Aero- 
nautical Laboratory Inc., Buffalo, N. Y., 1967.