Dear Andrew,
You will find the earliest history of MT fully documented in my
article published in Machine Translation 12 (1997), 195-252,
entitled "From first conception to first demonstration: the
nascent years of machine transaltion, 1947-1954."
According to my knowledge the earliest newspaper mention
of MT was a report in the New York Times 31 May 1949 (for
details see above article).
The first PhD thesis on MT was by Anthony G. Oettinger,
Harvard, April 1954 (details in my book, and some
additional information in above article).
I can help with any other MT 'milestones' [ see also
the series of articles I have written for MT News International
and Language Today]
Best wishes,
John Hutchins
18 Nov
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