Semyon Nikolaevich Korsakov (russian: Семён Николаевич Корсаков, ) (14 January 1787 – 1 December 1853
OS) was a Russian government official, noted both as a
homeopath
Homeopathy or homoeopathy is a pseudoscientific system of alternative medicine. It was conceived in 1796 by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann. Its practitioners, called homeopaths, believe that a substance that causes symptoms of a dise ...
and an inventor who was involved with an early version of
information technology
Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system (I ...
.
Biography
Korsakov was born in 1787 in what is now
Kherson
Kherson (, ) is a port city of Ukraine
Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers appr ...
,
Ukraine
Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...
(then part of the
Russian empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
). His father was a military engineer. The family had migrated from
Lithuania
Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania ...
in the 14th century.
He was married to Sofia Mordvinova and they had four daughters and six sons, one of whom, Mikhail Semyonovich (russian: Михаил Семёнович Корсаков, ) (1826–1871), became famous in his own right as governor-general of Eastern Siberia and was the namesake of the town of
Korsakov in
Sakhalin Oblast
Sakhalin Oblast ( rus, Сахали́нская о́бласть, r=Sakhalínskaya óblast', p=səxɐˈlʲinskəjə ˈobləsʲtʲ) is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast) comprising the island of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in the Russian ...
and several Russian geological features.
From 1812 to 1814, Semyon Korsakov took part in the
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fren ...
with the Russian Army. He later was to serve as an official in the
statistics
Statistics (from German language, German: ''wikt:Statistik#German, Statistik'', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of ...
department of the Russian Police Ministry in
St. Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
. He was a recipient of the
Order of St. Anna
The Imperial Order of Saint Anna (russian: Орден Святой Анны; also "Order of Saint Anne" or "Order of Saint Ann") was a Holstein ducal and then Russian imperial order of chivalry. It was established by Karl Friedrich, Duke of Holst ...
and the
Order of St. Vladimir
The Imperial Order of Saint Prince Vladimir (russian: орден Святого Владимира) was an Imperial Russian order established on by Empress Catherine II in memory of the deeds of Saint Vladimir, the Grand Prince and the Baptize ...
.
Korsakov died in 1853 in the village of Tarusovo, then part of the
Moscow Province.
Homeopathy
Though Korsakov was not formally trained as a doctor, he was interested in medicine, possibly because of the difficulty in getting medical care in the rural area where he lived. According to his journals he treated several thousand patients, at first using
conventional medicine
Medicine is the science and Praxis (process), practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, Preventive medicine, prevention, therapy, treatment, Palliative care, palliation of their injury or disease, and Health promotion ...
, but in 1829 switching to
homeopathy at the urging of his relatives.
Korsakov is noted in homeopathic circles as the originator of the Korsakovian method of dilution, which differed from the
Hahnemannian
dilutions used by (and named for) homeopathy's founder in that it used a single container for a series of dilutions rather than a new container for each. Korsakov also used dilutions higher than those previously used (30C and higher). Dilutions made using his method are commonly designated with the letter "K", e.g. 15K.
Inventions
While working in the statistics department of the Police Ministry, Korsakov became intrigued with the possibility of using machinery to "enhance natural intelligence". To this end, he devised several devices which he called "machines for the comparison of ideas".
Intellectual machines
These included the "linear homeoscope with movable parts", the "linear homeoscope without movable parts", the "flat homeoscope", the "ideoscope", and the "simple comparator". The purpose of the devices was primarily to facilitate the search for information, stored in the form of punched cards or similar media (for example, wooden boards with perforations). Korsakov announced his new method in September 1832, and rather than seeking patents offered the machines for public use.
The punch card
A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to di ...
had been introduced in 1805, but until that time had been used solely in the textile industry
The textile industry is primarily concerned with the design, production and distribution of yarn, cloth and clothing. The raw material may be natural, or synthetic using products of the chemical industry.
Industry process
Cotton manufacturi ...
to control loom
A loom is a device used to weave cloth and tapestry. The basic purpose of any loom is to hold the warp threads under tension to facilitate the interweaving of the weft threads. The precise shape of the loom and its mechanics may vary, but th ...
s. Korsakov was reputedly the first to use the cards for information storage.
Korsakov presented his ideas to the Imperial Academy of Sciences
The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; russian: Росси́йская акаде́мия нау́к (РАН) ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across t ...
in St. Petersburg, but their experts rejected his application, failing to see the potential of mechanizing searches through large stores of information. His machines were largely forgotten until after the Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, when a revival of historical interest resulted in the publication (in 1961) of several documents from the academy's archives relating to Korsakov's machines and the uncovering of a book about them written by Korsakov himself.
Notes
References
*Povarov G.N
Semen Nikolayevich Korsakov. Machines for the Comparison of Philosophical Ideas.
In: Trogemann, Georg; Ernst, Wolfgang and Nitussov, Alexander
''Computing in Russia: The History of Computer Devices and Information Technology Revealed''
(pp 47–49), Verlag, 2001. Translated by Alexander Y. Nitussov. ,
Semen Korsakov's inventions
Cybernetics Dept. of MEPhI
Semen Korsakov’s brochure
of 1832 (translated from the French). Ed. by Alexander Mikhailov , 2009
С.Н. Корсаков
World of Homeopathy (Мир Гомеопатии)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Korsakov, Semen
1787 births
1853 deaths
Russian homeopaths
Russian inventors
Russian statisticians
Russian military personnel of the Napoleonic Wars
People from Kherson
Recipients of the Order of St. Anna
Recipients of the Order of St. Vladimir
Russian computer scientists