The algorithm that evolved these robots was invented by Charles Darwin in the nineteenth century. He didn’t think of it as an algorithm at the time, partly because a key subroutine was still missing. Once James Watson and Francis Crick provided it in 1953, the stage was set for the second coming of evolution: in silico instead of in vivo, and a billion times faster. Its prophet was a ruddy-faced, perpetually grinning midwesterner by the name of John Holland.
