Semyon Nikolayevich Korsakov (; – ) 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 or homeopathic physicians, believe that a substance that ...

and an inventor who was involved with an early version of

information technology Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data processing, data and information processing, and storage. Inf ...

Biography

Korsakov was born in 1787 in

Kherson Kherson (Ukrainian language, Ukrainian and , , ) is a port city in southern Ukraine that serves as the administrative centre of Kherson Oblast. Located by the Black Sea and on the Dnieper, Dnieper River, Kherson is the home to a major ship-bui ...

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

(now in

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

). His father was a military engineer. The family had migrated from

Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, 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, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...

in the 14th century. He was married to Sofia Mordvinova and they had four daughters and six sons, one of whom, Mikhail Semyonovich Korsakov (; 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=Sakhalinskaya oblastʹ, 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 {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Napoleonic Wars , partof = the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars , image = Napoleonic Wars (revision).jpg , caption = Left to right, top to bottom:Battl ...

with the Russian Army. He later was to serve as an official in the

statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a s ...

department of the Russian Police Ministry in

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601, ...

. He was a recipient of the Order of St Anna and the Order of St Vladimir. 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, but in 1829 switching to

homeopathy 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 or homeopathic physicians, believe that a substance that ...

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. Linear Homeoscope

The

punch card A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a stiff paper-based medium used to store digital information via the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Developed over the 18th to 20th centuries, punched cards were wide ...

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 textiles: yarn, cloth and clothing. Industry process Cotton manufacturing Cotton is the world's most important natural fibre. In the year 2007, th ...

to control

loom A loom is a device used to weaving, weave cloth and tapestry. The basic purpose of any loom is to hold the Warp (weaving), warp threads under tension (mechanics), tension to facilitate the interweaving of the weft threads. The precise shape of ...

s. Korsakov was reputedly the first to use the cards for information storage. Korsakov presented his ideas to the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Saint 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 (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, 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 Homeopaths Inventors from the Russian Empire Statisticians from the Russian Empire Russian military personnel of the Napoleonic Wars People from Kherson Recipients of the Order of St. Anna Recipients of the Order of St. Vladimir Scientists from the Russian Empire