Oxford Scholarship Online: Alan Turing's Automatic Computing Engine

Alan Turing's Automatic Computing Engine The Master Codebreaker's Struggle to build the Modern Computer Copeland, B. Jack Professor of Philosophy at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand Print publication date: 2005 (this edition) Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2008 Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-856593-2
15 The ACE Simulator and the Cybernetic Model doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198565932.003.0016 Michael Woodger Abstract: This chapter discusses the ACE simulator and the Cybernetic Model. The ACE simulator was a demonstration machine built as an aid to the visualization of binary operations. Designed by D. W. Davies and Michael Woodger in the winter of 1949/1950, it was demonstrated on January 30, 1950 as part of the NPL Jubilee demonstrations to the Royal Society at Burlington House. The Cybernetic Model was constructed in May 1949, before even the first chassis of the Pilot Model ACE had been delivered. The Cybernetic Model was built to explore some of Turing's ideas about learning, and had nothing to do with the development of the ACE. Keywords: ACE simulator, D. W. Davies, Michael Woodger, Cybernetic Model, demonstration machine, binary operations, Turing, learning,