Algorithm
The word 'algorithm' has its roots in Latinizing the name of Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi in a first step to "algorismus". Al-Khwārizmī (, , c. 780–850) was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, geographer, and scholar in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, whose name means 'the native of Khwarezm', a region that was part of Greater Iran and is now in Uzbekistan.
Algorithm characterizations
For his part John Venn, a logician contemporary to Jevons, was less than thrilled, opining that "it does not seem to me that any contrivances at present known "or likely to be discovered" really deserve the name of logical machines" (italics added, Venn 1881:120). But of historical use to the developing notion of "algorithm" is his explanation for his negative reaction with respect to a machine that "may subserve a really valuable purpose by enabling us to avoid otherwise inevitable labor":
He concludes that "I cannot see that any machine can hope to help us except in the third of these steps; so that it seems very doubtful whether any thing of this sort really deserves the name of a logical engine."(Venn 1881:119–121).