The Automatic Creation of Literature Abstracts (Auto-Abstracts)

Excerpts of technical papers and magazine articles that serve the purposes of conventional abstracts have been created entirely by automatic means. In the process described, the complete text of an article in machine-readable form is scanned by an IBM 704 data processor and analyzed in accordance with a standard program. Statistical information derived on word frequency and distribution is used by the machine to compute a relative measure of significance, first for individual words and then for sentences. Sentences scoring highest in significance are extracted and printed out to become the "Auto-Abstract".

By: H. P. Luhn

Published in: RC42 in 1958

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rc42.pdf

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