Article View: alt.folklore.computers
Article #620824Re: Implementation of a Turing Machine?
From: Jon Elson
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2018 19:59
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2018 19:59
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2825 bytes
Gareth's Downstairs Computer wrote: > It is particularly fascinating that a Turing Machine could > have been built with the technology available at the time > it was first postualted (1935?) A simple Turing machine could have definitely been built in 1935, using vacuum tubes and relays. But, when Turing proposed it, is was the intention that it be really "stupid" to prove the point that all computers that posessed certain abilities were equivalent, ie. they could solve the same problems, but not necessarily in the same elapsed time. So, when all this electronic hardware was expensive and cumbersome, it made more sense to use it to make practical computers. Although the Atanasoff-Berry "computer" was not built until, I think, 1938-39, there was nothing in it that was not available a decade before that. (I say "computer", because by the Turing definition, it was not stored-program and could only skip instructions, no branching was possible.) But, with the technology in the ABC, it COULD have been expanded to a stored program computer with branching. Jon
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X-Received: by 10.107.166.68 with SMTP id p65mr16240144ioe.71.1519070060991; Mon, 19 Feb 2018 11:54:20 -0800 (PST) X-BeenThere: alt.folklore.computers@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.36.26.211 with SMTP id 202ls948818iti.10.canary-gmail; Mon, 19 Feb 2018 11:54:20 -0800 (PST) X-Received: by 10.36.95.77 with SMTP id r74mr12477984itb.35.1519070060060; Mon, 19 Feb 2018 11:54:20 -0800 (PST) Path: mbox-mo1.pugleaf.net!s63ni4353itb.0!nntp.google.com!border1.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!border2.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!buffer2.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!news.giganews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2018 13:54:14 -0600 From: Jon Elson <jme...@wustl.edu> Reply-To: jme...@wustl.edu Organization: Washington University Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2018 13:59:03 -0600 User-Agent: KNode/4.8.5 Subject: Re: Implementation of a Turing Machine? Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers References: <p6d0na$o5g$1@dont-email.me> <c0vk8dl5m89kives0l6qto4p2dtjp6m5s7@4ax.com> <p6e4bt$s3q$1@dont-email.me> MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: <0pudnX2zSfH6thbHnZ2dnUU7-IvNnZ2d@giganews.com> Lines: 23 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com X-Trace: sv3-PNOXovClmHPrEWlpZxePP//uYjsGnHhwuG2QZto8BNiOwy3FcaTqT/b/piS6sFTdWgvBbcNHsa8WaGg!D08aBF/pVRQRM2A7Hvg7M62v6awZ4/ZcKSTYk8ZtvJwkDCNTDAnKFnG6DtgE02yyWCW+5M0NzdV5!EA== X-Complaints-To: ab...@giganews.com X-DMCA-Notifications: http://www.giganews.com/info/dmca.html X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 Bytes: 2338 X-Original-Bytes: 2276 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit