Jacek Karpiński (9 April 1927 21 February 2010) was a Polish pioneer in computer engineering and computer science.
During World War II, he was a soldier in the Batalion Zośka of the Polish Home Army, and was awarded multiple times with a Cross of Valour. He took part in Operation Kutschera (intelligence) and the Warsaw Uprising, where he was heavily wounded.
Later, he became a developer of one of the first machine learning algorithms, techniques for character and image recognition.
After receiving a UNESCO award in 1960, he travelled for several years around the academic centres in the United States, including MIT, Harvard, Caltech, and many others.
In 1971, he designed one of the first minicomputers, the K-202. Because of the policy on computer development in the People's Republic of Poland, belonging to the Comecon that time, the K-202 was never mass-produced.
Karpiński later became a pig farmer, and in 1981, after receiving a passport, emigrated to Switzerland.
He also founded the Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence of the Polish Academy of Sciences in the early 1960s.
Family and childhood
Jacek Karpiński was born on 9 April 1927 in Turin, Italy into a family of Polish intellectuals and alpinists. His father, Adam 'Akar' Karpiński, was a prominent aeronautic engineer (who co-constructed the SL-1 Akar, the first glider constructed entirely by the Poles) and inventor, credited with projects of innovative climbing equipment (crampons, 'Akar-Ramada' tent). His mother, Wanda Czarnocka-Karpińska, was a respected physician who went on to become Dean of the University of Physical Education in Warsaw. Both were pioneers of winter mountaineering in the Tatra Mountains (first successful winter attacks on Banówka, Nowy Wierch, Lodowy Szczyt and others).Lipiński 2014, p. 48 Adam Karpiński was also a member of a Polish expedition into the Andes, which was the first to climb the peak Mercedario (6720 m.). Karpiński himself was due to be born in the Vallot winter hutLipiński 2014, p. 18 near Mont Blanc, but due to the extreme weather conditions, his parents had to retreat to Turin, where their first child was born.
Karpiński had one younger brother, Marek, who also became an electrical engineer. The family moved from Biała Podlaska to Warsaw in 1934, where Wanda took a job at Physical University of Warsaw and Adam worked in PZL (Polish Aviation Works). Karpiński's father died in September 1939 during an expedition to Nanda Devi in the Himalayas. After an unsuccessful attack on the summit, along with Stefan Bernadzikiewicz, he decided to climb the nearby Tirsuli (7039m), where both were killed by an avalanche.
Wartime
Karpiński's life was changed not only by his father's death but by the outbreak of World War II. Despite his young age (fourteen at the time), by pretending to be seventeen, he managed to join the Gray Ranks, a Polish underground paramilitary boy scouts organization, where he served in Grupy Szturmowe (Assault Groups).
In early 1943, he was severely injured while working on homemade bombs for an underground sabotage operation when one of them accidentally exploded in the basement of his house. He lost sight in both eyes and faced the serious threat of hand-amputation.Lipiński 2014, p. 81 After his mother's intervention and the help of her fellow physicians, his eyes recovered fully and the hand was saved, but he never regained total control over it. After the recovery, Karpiński resumed his activities in the Home Army.
With the help of his mother, Wanda, and brother, Marek, who both also actively participated in the resistance effort, the family established a secret resistance outpost in their family home on Obserwatorów Street. The place was an outpost for Juliusz "Laudański" Deczkowski's unit and contained a clandestine shooting range. It was also a hideout for Stanisław Miedza-Tomaszewski, a Home Army officer working for its Informational Department.
Karpiński participated in numerous field operations, including Sieczychy Operation (Akcja pod Sieczychami), as a soldier, and Operation Kutschera, as a part of recon under Wiesław Krajewski. After the formation of the Home Army's Zośka battalion, Karpiński enrolled, where he befriended poet Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński, both being commanders of smaller sub-units.Lipiński 2014, p.87
Karpiński also participated in the Warsaw Uprising. On the first day of fighting, he was trapped weaponless with around 30 other soldiers in a hospital building on Koszykowa street after the weaponry supply had been mistakenly directed somewhere else. While evacuating the unit, Karpiński's group was caught under heavy fire, which resulted in most of the evacuees dead. Karpiński himself was shot with a 9mm caliber gun a bullet was stuck in his backbone but he survived. Found next day by the hospital's nurses, he received treatment but remained paralyzed. Released from hospital after the Uprising's collapse, he rejoined his family in Pruszków but remained unable to stand or walk. The family moved through Kraków and Zakopane to a small village of Murzasichle in the Tatras, where they remained through the rest of the war. During the course of the war, Karpiński was awarded the Cross of Valour three times.
Post-war
After World War II, Karpiński's family moved to Radomsko, and he started to attend local high school. He was forced to learn how to walk again, which he did during hiking trips in the mountains with his brother and Józef Lityński. He completed the entire high school curriculum in one year and passed the baccalaureate with flying colours. Afterwards, Karpiński moved to Łódź to begin university education at the Faculty of Electro-Mechanical Sciences within the local polytechnic. After two years, he moved to Warsaw University of Technology from which he graduated in 1951.
Karpiński, just as many other former Zośka battalion veterans, influenced by former Home Army high officer Jan "Radosław" Mazurkiewicz's call, revealed himself to the Communists, but unlike many, he was spared imprisonment. Nevertheless, he was forced to change workplace several times, eventually receiving a work warrant for T-12 factory of electrical components in Żerań. During the time Karpiński was planning to flee Poland, he even worked on designing a mini-submarine in which he would be able to cross the Baltic Sea and reach the Danish island of Bornholm.Lipiński 2014, p. 132 However, after the first sights of the Polish thaw, he decided to stay. In 1955 he was offered a job at the Polish Academy of Sciences' Institute of Basic Problems, which he accepted. There he worked under Leszek Filipkowski on the design of the prototype ultrasonography device.
AAH
His first independent project was the AAH — Analytical Analyzer of Harmonics. Karpiński was asked by a long-time friend, Józef Lityński, an employee of the State Institute of Hydrology and Meteorology, whom he had known from his time in Radomsko, to build a device to help calculate Fourier integrals. The Institute hoped the device could help improve the effectiveness of long-term weather forecasts. Karpiński gathered a team of five people and constructed a computer based on vacuum tubes in 1957. The machine had been used for two years when it was accidentally destroyed. Karpiński himself claimed AAH raised the precision of forecasts by 10%,Lipiński 2014, p. 133 an estimate which has not been contested. A part of the engineering team was Karpiński's brother Marek, who worked with him successfully until his tragic death in 1957 during a climbing expedition in the Tatras.
AKAT-1
The breakthrough achievement of Karpiński's career was the construction of AKAT-1 in 1959 in co-operation with engineer Janusz Tomaszewski. AKAT-1 was a pioneering work the world's first differential equations analyzer based on transistors. Karpiński built the device during his spell at the Polish Academy of Science's Institute of Automatics, where he found employment after the success of AAH. The aim of AKAT-1 was to simulate various complex dynamic processes like heat transfer or a shock absorber's mechanics. The innovativeness of the device was acknowledged by historians of computer science e.g. Maciej Sysło claims it has to be conceded that Karpiński's effort preceded any other similar device.Lipiński 2014, p. 136 The construction was also lauded for its aesthetical merits the panel designed by leading Polish artists Emil Cieślar, Olgierd Rutkowski, Stanisław Siemek and Andrzej Wróblewski had been considered to 'innovatively merge all functions in a congruent and attractive form that anticipated the future trends'. The machine has been domestically welcomed warmly, having been covered by a host of country-wide media, including national television TVP1 and Polish Film Chronicle.Lipiński 2014, p.137
Currently, the machine can be seen in the Museum of Technology in Warsaw.
UNESCO scholarship in the United States
The success of AKAT-1 enabled Karpiński to be put forward by Poland as its candidate for the UNESCO worldwide award for young engineers in 1960. Karpiński's work was evaluated with around 200 other contestants by an UNESCO international committee, and he turned out to be among the six laureates. As a reward, he was allowed to go on a half-year scholarship in the United States to visit major technological centres in the country. During the scholarship, which has been eventually extended to a full year, Karpiński managed to visit around twenty universities and laboratories, among them Computation Laboratory at Harvard, Caltech, UCLA and Los Alamos National Laboratory. During his stay he met with a number of leading computer scientists of the time including John Eckert, Claude Shannon and Edward F. Moore. Despite the numerous offers to stay in the United States and move his work there, Karpiński decided to come back to Poland. Later, it emerged that before and during his stay in the United States, Karpiński cooperatated with Polish intelligence to collect data, which sparked controversies around his person. Karpiński himself, interviewed on the matter after the fall of communism, was reluctant to comment the matter, but insisted the agreement with intelligence officer cpt. Zygmunt Goć was limited to reporting on the state of technical progress of American facilities.Lipiński 2014, p. 151
Perceptron
Shortly after his return from the US, Karpiński, inspired by his American experience, decided to implement some of his newest ideas at home. He convinced the director of the Institute of Automatics Stefan Węgrzyn to build a perceptron a device built according to Frank Rosenblatt's ideas, able to learn how to discern and recognize objects and shapes. The idea was successfully realized, and the Polish perceptron was completed in 1964, being one of the first of such in the world and the first known in the Communist bloc.Lipiński 2014, p. 149
KAR-65