The first AAAI conference
The first national conference of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence was held at Stanford.
Why it matters
The field acquired a professional body of its own just as it began selling products rather than only publishing papers.
The programme covered vision, problem solving and knowledge representation, and included McDermott's paper on R1. The association began publishing AI Magazine and the conference became annual. Combining a scientific venue with an industry association shaped how the field spoke about itself through the whole expert-systems boom.