Who Invented Backpropagation?
Jürgen Schmidhuber’s web page “Who Invented Backpropagation?”, which states that it was written in 2014 and updated in 2020, 2022 and 2025. Read as served on 2026-10-29; a retrospective account, secondary for the events it reports.
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- Who Invented Backpropagation? Jürgen Schmidhuber's IDSIA pages (people.idsia.ch) · publication date unknown · Retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-29 (SHA-256 2c4d92180febdafdbac551a24d92a95af13fbc07003e610a3eb2a52bcef2bc0b). Mutable web page as served on 2026-10-29; it states it was written in 2014 and updated in 2020, 2022 and 2025. Earlier wordings were not retrieved. Its wording can change; earlier wording is not authenticated.
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- Gradient theory of optimal flight pathsAccording to Schmidhuber's page, Henry J. Kelley published a precursor of backpropagation in 1960.2025 · event · Stated in source · Supported Inspect claim & evidence ↗Gradient theory of optimal flight paths: document page →
- The representation of the cumulative rounding error of an algorithm as a Taylor expansion of the local rounding errors (master's thesis, University of Helsinki)According to Schmidhuber's page "Who Invented Backpropagation?", the modern version of backpropagation was first published in 1970 by Seppo Linnainmaa.2025 · event · Stated in source · Supported Inspect claim & evidence ↗The representation of the cumulative rounding error of an algorithm as a Taylor expansion of the local rounding errors (master's thesis, University of Helsinki): document page →
- Werbos (1982), cited by Schmidhuber as [BP2]According to Schmidhuber's page, the first neural-network-specific application of efficient backpropagation was apparently described by Werbos in 1982, and not yet in his 1974 thesis.2025 · event · Stated in source · Supported Inspect claim & evidence ↗Werbos (1982), cited by Schmidhuber as [BP2]: document page →
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