The ALPAC report
A National Academy of Sciences committee concluded that machine translation was slower, costlier and worse than human translation, and recommended ending its funding.
Why it matters
The first official finding that a result had not been achieved cut US machine translation funding for two decades.
The report did not dismiss computational linguistics; it recommended basic research in it. But its verdict on the applied programme was unambiguous, and most groups closed as a result. Together with the 1973 Lighthill report it defined the period of reduced funding later called a winter.