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The satirical letter “Darwin among the Machines”, signed Cellarius (The Press, Christchurch, 13 June 1863), says that people are giving machines a self-regulating, self-acting power that will be to them what intellect has been to the human race, and describes the minds of the machines of the future. Copy claim link
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Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source
Date 1863-06-13 · publication Records dated 1863 → Role Earliest located Register (kind of text) Satirical Scope and limits A satirical letter to a newspaper, signed with a pseudonym; it documents what the letter says, not its author’s view. The letter ascribes minds to future machines and goes on to call for every machine to be destroyed. Erewhon (1872) is the earliest located novel on this proposition and Turing’s lecture of 1947 the earliest located non-fiction text. The quotations were matched against the Papers Past OCR text; the column images were refused (HTTP 403) to the preparing session, and the image readings (‘self-acting’, ‘the’) are those of a second check by a model of another family, made on 2026-11-03 and 2026-11-04.
The evidence 02 primary source Supports the claim
Darwin among the Machines ↗ The Press (Christchurch) · 1863-06-13
Archived copy, captured 2026-08-26: Darwin among the Machines ↗
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Source excerpt “that self-regulating, self-acting power, which will be to them what intellect has been to the human race” Location in source Paragraph beginning “The views of machinery which we are thus feebly indicating”, sentence beginning “We have often heard this debated”
How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher
Machine-checked · 2026-11-04
Source details and check notes Authors Cellarius (Samuel Butler) Version Papers Past article text (marked user-corrected) in the Internet Archive capture of 2026-08-26; quoted passages compared with the archived column images of the printed page (captured 2024-06-12). Papers Past returned a bot-protection page to scripted requests. A later check on 2026-10-06 verified the article text but could not retrieve the column images (HTTP 403). Canonical address Open the canonical source ↗ Accessed 2026-10-06 Language English (en) Archive copy Open archived copy, captured 2026-08-26: Darwin among the Machines ↗ . Captured 59609 days after the recorded publication date. An archive copy shows only what the archive retrieved on 2026-08-26. It does not prove what the page said earlier, and it can differ from the copy checked on 2026-10-06.Attribution The Press (Christchurch), 13 June 1863, via Papers Past (National Library of New Zealand). Reuse Public domain (published 1863; the author died in 1902). Papers Past: no known copyright (New Zealand).. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each) under Selekoa’s quotation policy. Public-domain text. Check notes Candidate pack passage, antecedent texts (research/prehistory). The quotation (17 words) matched a fresh retrieval of 2026-11-04 (SHA-256 04b46cebae54…, the file the candidate pack read). Matching ignored differences of whitespace, case, quotation marks, dashes, line-break hyphens and Unicode compatibility forms, so the source’s typography can differ. Wording as read on the column image by a second check by a model of another family; the OCR text, matched at admission, reads ‘selfacting’ and ‘tho’. No human editorial review. primary source Supports the claim
Darwin among the Machines ↗ The Press (Christchurch) · 1863-06-13
Archived copy, captured 2026-08-26: Darwin among the Machines ↗
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Cite the original source Cite the original document, not Selekoa. Check these details against it.
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Source excerpt “Their minds will be in a state of perpetual calm” Location in source Same paragraph, sentence after “Sin, shame, and sorrow, will have no place among them”
How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher
Machine-checked · 2026-11-04
Source details and check notes Authors Cellarius (Samuel Butler) Version Papers Past article text (marked user-corrected) in the Internet Archive capture of 2026-08-26; quoted passages compared with the archived column images of the printed page (captured 2024-06-12). Papers Past returned a bot-protection page to scripted requests. A later check on 2026-10-06 verified the article text but could not retrieve the column images (HTTP 403). Canonical address Open the canonical source ↗ Accessed 2026-10-06 Language English (en) Archive copy Open archived copy, captured 2026-08-26: Darwin among the Machines ↗ . Captured 59609 days after the recorded publication date. An archive copy shows only what the archive retrieved on 2026-08-26. It does not prove what the page said earlier, and it can differ from the copy checked on 2026-10-06.Attribution The Press (Christchurch), 13 June 1863, via Papers Past (National Library of New Zealand). Reuse Public domain (published 1863; the author died in 1902). Papers Past: no known copyright (New Zealand).. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each) under Selekoa’s quotation policy. Public-domain text. Check notes Candidate pack passage, antecedent texts (research/prehistory). The quotation (10 words) matched a fresh retrieval of 2026-11-04 (SHA-256 04b46cebae54…, the file the candidate pack read). Matching ignored differences of whitespace, case, quotation marks, dashes, line-break hyphens and Unicode compatibility forms, so the source’s typography can differ. Matched verbatim in the OCR text. No human editorial review. Status and meaning Editorial status. Machine-checked . Machines found this record and checked it against its sources; no person accepted it individually. Each evidence record above shows how it was checked.
Relation. A passage of the document meets the proposition’s criterion. The record documents what the text states, in its register (fiction and satire are labelled); it is not evidence that the proposition is true and implies no influence on or from another text.
Date. The Press (Christchurch), vol. III, issue 192, p. 1, 13 June 1863, as Papers Past’s issue record gives it; the issue masthead was not inspected.
Record ID pre-u02-butler-1863-darwin-among-the-machines