Alan Turing and his contemporaries pdf
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- Bu səhifədəki naviqasiya:
- Christopher P Burton
- Martin Campbell-Kelly
CONTENTS
Authors ix Acknowledgements xi Preface xiii 1 THE IDEAS MEN 1
Science at war 1
The Moore School: the cradle of electronic computing 3
The Universal Turing Machine 5
Practical problems, 1945–7 8
The rich tapestry of projects, 1948–54 8 2 ACES AND DEUCES 11
Turing’s first computer design 11
Toil and trouble 13
Intelligence and artificial intelligence 14
Pilot ACE arrives at last 17
DEUCE and others 19 3 IVORY TOWERS AND TEA ROOMS 21
Maurice Wilkes and the Cambridge University Mathematical Laboratory 21
22
A Memory for EDSAC 23
EDSAC, ACE and LEO 24
Not just EDSAC 26
First steps in programming 28
Wilkes, Wheeler and Gill 31
The last days of the EDSAC 31 v
Contents 4 33
Memories are made of this … 33
The Baby computer 37
The Baby grows up 38
Ferranti enters the picture 41
A supercomputer 43
Programs and users 43
What came next? 45 5 MEANWHILE, IN DEEPEST HERTFORDSHIRE 47
The Admiralty’s secret 47
Innovations at Borehamwood 50
Swords into ploughshares 53
The coming of automation 55 6 ONE MAN IN A BARN 59
X-ray calculations 59
The challenge of memory 61
Computers for all! 62
The Booth multiplier 64
Commercial success 65 7 INTO THE MARKETPLACE 69
Out of the laboratory 69
Defence and the Cold War 69
Science and engineering 71
The world of commerce and business 74
The market grows and the manufacturers shrink 76 8 HINDSIGHT AND FORESIGHT: THE LEGACY OF TURING AND
HIS CONTEMPORARIES 79
Who did what, and when? 79
Turing as seen by his contemporaries 80
Turing’s reputation by 1984 83
APPENDIX A: TECHNICAL COMPARISON OF FIVE EARLY BRITISH COMPUTERS 85
The Manchester Small-Scale Experimental
Machine (SSEM), known as the ‘Baby’ 88
The Cambridge EDSAC 89
The Ferranti Mark I’s instruction format 90
Instruction format for the English Electric DEUCE 92 vi
Contents
APPENDIX B: TURING AND COMPUTING: A TIMELINE 95
Alan Turing at NPL, 1945–8 95
Alan Turing at Manchester, 1948–54 98
APPENDIX C: FURTHER READING 105
General accounts of the period 1945–60 106
Chapter-specific books 106 Index
109 vii
AUTHORS Christopher P Burton MSc, FIET, FBCS, CEng graduated in Electrical Engineering at the University of Birmingham. He worked on computer hardware, software and systems developments in Ferranti Ltd and then ICT and ICL, nearly always being based in the Manchester area, from 1957 until his retirement from the industry in 1989. He is a member of the Computer Conservation Society (CCS) and led the team that built a replica of the Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM). Other roles in the CCS have included chairmanship of the Elliott 401 Project Group and of the Pegasus Project Group, and more recently investigating the feasibility of building a replica of the Cambridge EDSAC. For replicating the SSEM he was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Manchester, the first Lovelace Gold Medal by BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, and a Chairman’s Gold Award for Excellence by ICL. Martin Campbell-Kelly is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Warwick, where he specialises in the history of comput- ing. His books include Computer: A History of the Information Machine, co-authored with William Aspray, From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry, and ICL: A Business and Technical History. He is editor of The Collected Works of Charles Babbage. Professor Campbell-Kelly is a Fellow of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, visiting professor at Portsmouth University, and a colum- nist for the Communications of the ACM. He is a member of the ACM History Com- mittee, a council member of the British Society for the History of Mathematics, and a committee member of the BCS Computer Conservation Society. He is a member of the editorial boards of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, the International Journal for the History of Engineering and Technology and the Rutherford Journal, and editor-in-chief of the Springer Series in the History of Computing. ix
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