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The idea of non-biological self-replicating systems was introduced in Samuel Butler's article " Darwin Among the Machines " published only a few years after The Origin of Species.

As a serious proposal, it was first suggested by mathematician John Von Neumann in the late 1940s when he proposed a kinematic self-reproducing automaton model as a thought experiment.

See Von Neumann, J., 1966, The Theory of Self-reproducing Automata, A. Burks, ed., Univ.

of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL.