Subject: Mathematics Book Title: 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 (Editor),
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Print publication date: 2005
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2008 Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-856593-2 doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198565932.001.0001 |
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Abstract:
The mathematical genius Alan Turing (1912-1954) was one of the greatest scientists and thinkers of the 20th century. Now well known for his crucial wartime role in breaking the ENIGMA code, he was the first to conceive of the fundamental principle of the modern computer — the idea of controlling a computing machine's operations by means of coded instructions, stored in the machine's ‘memory’. In 1945, Turing drew up his revolutionary design for an electronic computing machine — his Automatic Computing Engine (‘ACE’). A pilot model of the ACE ran its first programme in 1950 and the production version, the ‘DEUCE’, went on to become a cornerstone of the fledgling British computer industry. The first ‘personal’ computer was based on Turing's ACE. This book describes Turing's struggle to build the modern computer. It contains first-hand accounts by Turing and by the pioneers of computing who worked with him. The book describes the hardware and software of the ACE and contains chapters describing Turing's path-breaking research in the fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Artificial Life (A-Life).
Keywords: ENIGMA code, computer, computer code, computer memory, DEUCE, personal computer, hardware, software, artificial intelligence, artificial life Table of Contents
Introduction
1.
The National Physical Laboratory
2.
The creation of the NPL Mathematics Division
3.
The origins and development of the ACE project
4.
The Pilot ACE at the National Physical Laboratory
5.
Turing and the computer
6.
The ACE and the shaping of British computing
7.
From Turing machine to ‘electronic brain’
8.
Computer architecture and the ACE computers
9.
The Pilot ACE instruction format
10.
Programming the Pilot ACE
11.
The Pilot ACE: from concept to reality
12.
Applications of the Pilot ACE and the DEUCE
13.
The ACE Test Assembly, the Pilot ACE, the Big ACE, and the Bendix G15
14.
The DEUCE—a user's view
15.
The ACE Simulator and the Cybernetic Model
16.
The Pilot Model and the Big ACE on the web
17.
How valves work
18.
Recollections of early vacuum tube circuits
19.
Circuit design of the Pilot ACE and the Big ACE
20.
Proposed electronic calculator (1945)
21.
Notes on memory (1945)
22.
The Turing–Wilkinson lecture series (1946–7)
23.
The state of the art in electronic digital computing in Britain and the United States (1947)
Index
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doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198565932.001.0001
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