In the first decades of the twentieth century, mathematicians and logicians were trying to formalize mathematics. David Hilbert and John von Neumann set down the rules of formalism in the 1920s (as we shall see in the next chapter). Before Hilbert and von Neumann, Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell demonstrated in their Principia Mathematica that some aspects of human reasoning could be formally described, thus linking this awakened interest in mathematical logic to the ideas of the long-forgotten originator of the field, George Boole. The idea of formal systems was of particular interest, because it appeared to bridge the abstractions of mathematics and the mysteries of human thought.

Some years later, Hollerith's Tabulating Machine had become an institution known as "International Business Machines," run by a fellow named Thomas Watson, Senior.

The seed fell on good ground.