Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) proposed the characteristica universalis and the calculus ratiocinator: an alphabet of concepts and a calculus to settle disputes by “calculating.” It was a vision of mechanical reasoning centuries before Turing.
Though he did not build a full machine of that kind, he did invent a mechanical calculator and linked logic, notation, and automation. His program shaped algebraic logic and the idea that formal language can reduce ambiguity.
In hindsight, the Leibnizian project reads as a proto-AI manifesto: if reasoning is calculation, it can run on an artifact. That intuition runs from Boole to Dartmouth.
