Gödel also appears as something of a detour. He did substantial work on other problems from Hilbert, particularly the unprovability of the consistency of arithmetic and the relative consistency of the Continuum Hypothesis. But it took Turing to answer Hilbert's Decision Problem in the negative: no finite procedure can determine the validity of any first-order sentence. In order to do this, Turing needed to conceptualize what any "finite procedure" might look like, and in so doing, he developed what have become known as Turing machines. He then realized that a Turing machine could be created which would mimic the actions of any Turing machine; thus appeared the idea of a universal computer.
The Universal Computer The Road From Leibniz To Turing Books Pdf File
But nowadays, it is better to reserve the word 'computer' for the type of machine which has swept everything else away in its path: the computer on which you are reading this page, the digital computer with 'internally stored modifiable program.'The world's computer industries now make billions out of manufacturing better and better versions of Turing's universal machine. But Alan Turing himself never made a point of saying he was first with the idea. And his earnings were always modest. Picture from a Japanese graphic book of Turing's story.So I wouldn't call Charles Babbage's 1840s Analytical Engine the design for a computer. It didn't incorporate the vital idea which is now exploited by the computer in the modern sense, the idea of storing programs in the same form as data and intermediate working. His machine was designed to store programs on cards, while the working was to be done by mechanical cogs and wheels. There were other differences — he did not have electronics or even electricity, and he still thought in base-10 arithmetic. But more fundamental is the rigid separation of instructions and data in Babbage's thought. 2ff7e9595c
Comments