Turing and the computer

References (125)

1. Turing, A. M. (1936) 'On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem', Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, Series 2, 42, (1936-7), 230-65. Reprinted in Copeland, B. J. (ed.) (2004) The Essential Turing. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.
2. Church, A. (1937) 'Review of Turing's "On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem"', Journal of Symbolic Logic, 2, 42-3.
3. 'On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem', p. 231.
4. Newman in interview with Christopher Evans (The Pioneers of Computing: An Oral History of Computing. London: Science Museum);
5. 'Dr. A. M. Turing', The Times, 16 June 1954, p. 10.
6. On the Church-Turing thesis, see Copeland, B. J. (1996) 'The Church- Turing thesis', in E. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy <http://plato.stanford.edu>.
7. Turing, A. M. (1948) 'Intelligent machinery' (National Physical Laboratory Report, 1948), in Copeland (ed.) The Essential Turing (see note 1), p. 414. (A copy of the original typescript is in the Woodger Papers, National Museum of Science and Industry, Kensington, London; a digital facsimile is in The Turing Archive for the History of Computing <www.AlanTuring.net/intelligent_machinery>.)
8. See, for example, White, I. (1988) 'The limits and capabilities of machines- a review', IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 18, 917-38.
9. Newell, A. (1980) 'Physical symbol systems', Cognitive Science, 4, 135-83; the quotation is from p. 150.
10. See further Copeland, B. J. (2002) 'Hypercomputation', Minds and Machines, 12, 461-502;
11. Copeland, B. J. (2000) 'Narrow versus wide mechanism', Journal of Philosophy, 97, 5-32 (reprinted in Scheutz, M. (ed.) (2002) Computationalism: New Directions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
12. For a full account of Turing's involvement with the Bletchley Park codebreaking operation, see Copeland (ed.) The Essential Turing.
13. A memo, 'Naval Enigma Situation', dated 1 November 1939 and signed by Knox, Twinn, Welchman, and Turing, said: 'A large 30 enigma bomb [sic] machine, adapted to use for cribs, is on order and parts are being made at the British Tabulating Company'. (The memo is in the British National Archives: Public Record Office (PRO), Kew, Richmond, Surrey; document reference HW 14/2.)
14. Mahon, P. 'The History of Hut Eight, 1939-1945' ( June 1945), p. 28 (PRO document reference HW 25/2; a digital facsimile of the original typescript is in The Turing Archive for the History of Computing <www.AlanTuring.net/ mahon_hut_8>).
15. Welchman, G. (2000) The Hut Six Story: Breaking the Enigma Codes, 2nd edn., Cleobury Mortimer: M&M Baldwin; 'Squadron-Leader Jones, Section' (PRO document reference HW 3/164; thanks to Ralph Erskine for sending a copy of this document).
16. Flowers in interview with Copeland ( July 1998).
17. Flowers in interview with Copeland ( July 1996).
18. Newman in interview with Evans (see note 5).
19. Flowers in interview with Copeland ( July 1996).
20. Goldstine, H. (1972) The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 225-6.
21. For a history of Colossus see Copeland, B. J. 'Colossus and the Dawning of the Computer Age', in R. Erskine and M. Smith (eds) (2001) Action This Day. London: Bantam.
22. 'General Report on Tunny, with Emphasis on Statistical Methods' (PRO document reference HW 25/4, HW 25/5 (2 Vols)). This report was writ- ten in 1945 by Good, Michie, and Timms-members of Newman's section at Bletchley Park. A digital facsimile is in The Turing Archive for the History of Computing <www.AlanTuring.net/tunny_report>.
23. Von Neumann, J. (1954) 'The NORC and problems in high speed computing', in A. H. Taub (ed.) (1961) Collected Works of John von Neumann, Vol 5. Oxford: Pergamon Press; the quotation is from pp. 238-9.
24. Flowers in interview with Copeland ( July 1996).
25. Ibid.
26. Letter from Newman to von Neumann, 8 February 1946 (in the von Neumann Archive at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC; a digital facsimile is in The Turing Archive for the History of Computing <www.AlanTuring.net/ newman_vonneumann_8feb46>).
27. Turing, S. (1959) Alan M. Turing. Cambridge: W. Heffer, p. 74.
28. Bigelow, J. (1980) 'Computer development at the Institute for Advanced Study', in N. Metropolis, J. Howlett, and G. C. Rota (eds), A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century. New York: Academic Press, p. 308.
29. McCulloch, W. S. and Pitts, W. (1943) ' A logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity', Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics, 5, 115-33.
30. As noted by Hartree (1949) Calculating Instruments and Machines. Illinois: University of Illinois Press, pp. 97, 102.
31. Figure 3 is on p. 198 of the reprinting of the 'First Draft' in Stern, N. (1981) From ENIAC to UNIVAC: An Appraisal of the Eckert-Mauchly Computers. Bedford, MA: Digital Press.
32. Evening News, 23 December 1946. The cutting is among a number placed by Sara Turing in the Modern Archive Centre, King's College, Cambridge (catalogue reference K 5).
33. Turing, A. M. (1947) 'Lecture on the Automatic Computing Engine', in Copeland (ed.), The Essential Turing (see note 1); the quotation is from pp. 378, 383.
34. Turing in an undated letter to W. Ross Ashby (in the Woodger Papers (catalogue reference M11/99); a digital facsimile is in The Turing Archive for the History of Computing <www.AlanTuring.net/turing_ashby>).
35. 'I know that von Neumann was influenced by Turing . . . during his Princeton stay before the war', said Stanislaw Ulam (in interview with Evans in 1976, The Pioneers of Computing: An Oral History of Computing. London: Science Museum). When Ulam and von Neumann were touring in Europe during the summer of 1938, von Neumann devised a mathematical game involving Turing-machine-like descriptions of numbers (Ulam reported by William Aspray (1990) in his John von Neumann and the Origins of Modern Computing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 178, 313). The word 'intrigued' is used in this connection by von Neumann's friend and colleague Herman Goldstine (The Computer From Pascal to von Neumann, p. 275 (see note 20)).
36. Letter from Frankel to Brian Randell, 1972 (first published in Randell (1972) 'On Alan Turing and the origins of digital computers' in B. Meltzer and D. Michie (eds) Machine Intelligence 7. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. (Copeland is grateful to Randell for giving him a copy of the letter.)
37. Burks (a member of the ENIAC group) summarized matters thus in his 'From ENIAC to the stored-program computer: two revolutions in computers', in Metropolis, Howlett, and Rota (eds), A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century. Pres [Eckert] and John [Mauchly] invented the circulating mercury delay line store, with enough capacity to store program informa- tion as well as data. Von Neumann created the first modern order code and worked out the logical design of an electronic computer to execute it. (p. 312)
38. Burks also recorded (ibid., p. 341) that von Neumann was the first of the Moore School group to see the possibility, implicit in the stored-program concept, of allowing the computer to modify selected instructions in a program as it runs (e.g. in order to control loops and branching). The same idea lay at the foundation of Turing's theory of machine learning (see below).
39. Letter from Bigelow to Copeland, 12 April 2002. See also Aspray, John von Neumann and the Origins of Modern Computing, p. 178.
40. Bigelow in a tape-recorded interview made in 1971 by the Smithsonian Institution and released in 2002. (Copeland is grateful to Bigelow for sending a transcript of excerpts from the interview.)
41. Letter dated 29 November 1946 (in the von Neumann Archive at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC).
42. The text of 'The general and logical theory of automata' is in Taub (ed.), Collected Works of John von Neumann, Vol 5; the quotation is from pp. 313-14.
43. The text of 'Rigorous theories of control and information' is printed in von Neumann, J. (1966) Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata. Urbana: University of Illinois Press; the quotation is from p. 50.
44. The first papers in the series were the 'First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC', by von Neumann (1945), and 'Preliminary Discussion of the Logical Design of an Electronic Computing Instrument' by Burks, Goldstine, and von Neumann (1946).
45. Section 3.1 of Burks, A. W., Goldstine, H. H., and von Neumann, J. 'Preliminary Discussion of the Logical Design of an Electronic Computing Instrument', 28 June 1946, Institute for Advanced Study; reprinted in Taub (ed.), Collected Works of John von Neumann, Vol 5.
46. Letter from Burks to Copeland, 22 April 1998. See also Goldstine, The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann, p. 258.
47. Williams (1975) described the Computing Machine Laboratory on p. 328 of his 'Early computers at Manchester University', The Radio and Electronic Engineer, 45, 327-31: It was one room in a Victorian building whose architectural features are best described as 'late lavatorial'. The walls were of brown glazed brick and the door was labelled 'Magnetism Room'.
48. Peter Hilton in interview with Copeland (June 2001).
49. Williams in interview with Evans in 1976 (The Pioneers of Computing: An Oral History of Computing. London: Science Museum).
50. Williams, 'Early Computers at Manchester University, p. 328.
51. Newman, M. H. A. (1948) 'General principles of the design of all-purpose computing machines', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A, 195, 271-4; the quotation is from pp. 271-2.
52. Ibid., pp. 273-4.
53. Letter from Williams to Randell, 1972 (in Randell 'On Alan Turing and the origins of digital computers', p. 9).
54. Bowker, G. and Giordano, R. (1993) 'Interview with Tom Kilburn', Annals of the History of Computing, 15, 17-32.
55. Letter from Brian Napper to Copeland, 16 June 2002.
56. Bowker and Giordano, 'Interview with Tom Kilburn', p. 19.
57. Letter from Rees to Copeland, 2 April 2001.
58. Newman, W. 'Max Newman: Mathematician, Codebreaker and Computer Pioneer', to appear.
59. Kilburn in interview with Copeland (July 1997).
60. Letter from Tootill to Copeland, 18 April 2001.
61. Letter from Tootill to Copeland, 16 May 2001.
62. Letter from Tootill to Copeland, 18 April 2001.
63. Gandy in interview with Copeland (November 1995).
64. Letter from Williams to Randell, 1972 (see note 52).
65. 'Programmers Handbook for Manchester Electronic Computer', Computing Machine Laboratory, University of Manchester (no date, c.1950); a digital facsimile is available in The Turing Archive for the History of Computing <www.AlanTuring.net/programmers_handbook>). 519-39;
66. Copeland, B. J. (1998) 'Turing's O-Machines, Penrose, Searle, and the brain', Analysis, 58, 128-38; and Piccinini, G. (2003) ' Alan Turing and the mathematical objection', Minds and Machines, 13, 23-48.
67. Letter from Darwin to Appleton, 23 July 1947 (PRO document reference DSIR 10/385; a digital facsimile is in The Turing Archive for the History of Computing <www.AlanTuring.net/darwin_appleton_23jul47>).
68. Probably at the end of September (see Chapter 3, note 67). Turing was on half- pay during his sabbatical (Minutes of the Executive Committee of the NPL for 28 September 1948, p. 4 (NPL library; a digital facsimile is in The Turing Archive for the History of Computing <www.AlanTuring.net/npl_minutes_sept1948>)).
69. Turing, 'Intelligent machinery' (see note 7).
70. Michie, unpublished note (in the Woodger Papers).
71. Letter from Darwin to Turing, 11 November 1947 (in the Modern Archive Centre, King's College, Cambridge (catalogue reference D 5); a digital facsimile is in The Turing Archive for the History of Computing <www.AlanTuring.net/ darwin_turing_11nov47>).
72. Gandy in interview with Copeland (November 1995).
73. Minutes of the NPL Executive Committee for 28 September 1948, p. 4 (see note 86).
74. Turing, 'Intelligent machinery', p. 431.
75. Holland, J. H. (1992) Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p. x.
76. Turing, 'Intelligent machinery', p. 431.
77. See, for example, Newell, A. and Simon, H. A. (1976) 'Computer science as empirical inquiry: symbols and search', Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery, 19, 113-26.
78. Turing, A. M. (1950) 'Computing machinery and intelligence', Mind, 59, 433-60; reprinted in Copeland (ed.), The Essential Turing (see note 1).
79. Letter from Champernowne (January 1980) Computer Chess, 4, 80-1.
80. Michie, D. (1966) 'Game-playing and game-learning automata', in L. Fox (ed.), Advances in Programming and Non-numerical Computation. New York: Pergamon, p. 189.
81. Turing, A. M. (1953) 'Chess', part of ch. 25 in B. V. Bowden (ed.), Faster Than Thought, London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons; reprinted in Copeland (ed.), The Essential Turing.
82. Prinz, D. G. (1952) 'Robot chess', Research, 5, 261-6.
83. Bowden, Faster than Thought, p. 295.
84. Gradwell, C. 'Early Days', reminiscences in a Newsletter 'For those who worked on the Manchester Mk I computers', April 1994. (Copeland is grateful to Prinz's daughter, Daniela Derbyshire, for sending him a copy of Gradwell's article.)
85. Prinz, D. G. 'Introduction to Programming on the Manchester Electronic Digital Computer', no date, Ferranti Ltd. (a digital facsimile is in The Turing Archive for the History of Computing <www.AlanTuring.net/prinz>). Turing, A. M. 'Programmers' Handbook for Manchester Electronic Computer' (see note 64).
86. Mays, W. and Prinz. D. G. (1950) ' A relay machine for the demonstration of symbolic logic', Nature, 165, no. 4188, 197-8; Prinz D. G. and Smith, J. B. 'Machines for the Solution of Logical Problems', in Bowden (ed.), Faster than Thought.
87. Letter from Strachey to Woodger, 13 May 1951 (in the Woodger Papers).
88. Letters from Woodger to Copeland, 15 July 1999 and 15 September 1999.
89. Turing, A. M. 'Programmers' Handbook for Manchester Electronic Computer' (see note 64).
90. Campbell-Kelly, M. (1985) 'Christopher Strachey, 1916-1975: a biographical note', Annals of the History of Computing, 7, 19-42, p. 24.
91. Strachey, C. S. (1952) 'Logical or non-mathematical programmes', Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery (Toronto, September, 1952), 46-9, p. 47.
92. Samuel 'Some studies in machine learning using the game of checkers', in Feigenbaum and Feldman (eds), p. 104 (see note 72).
93. Letter from Oettinger to Copeland, 19 June 2000; Oettinger, A. (1952) 'Programming a digital computer to learn', Philosophical Magazine, 43, 1243-63.
94. Oettinger in interview with Copeland (January 2000).
95. 'Programming a digital computer to learn', p. 1247 (see note 111).
96. Ibid., p. 1250. 59-69. (We cannot endorse Leiber's claim (An Invitation to Cognitive Science, p. 118) that Turing made use of weighted connections.)
97. Rosenblatt, F. (1958) 'The perceptron: a probabilistic model for information storage and organization in the brain', Psychological Review, 65, 386-408; the quotation is from p. 387.
98. The key to success in the search for training algorithms was the use of weighted connections or some equivalent device such as variable thresholds. During train- ing the algorithm increments or decrements the values of the weights by some small fixed amount. The relatively small magnitude of the increment or decre- ment at each step makes possible a smooth convergence towards the desired configuration. In contrast there is nothing smooth about the atomic steps involved in training a B-type. Switching the determining condition of an intro- verted pair from 0 to 1 or vice versa is a savage all-or-nothing shift. Turing seems not to have considered employing weighted connections or variable thresholds.
99. Turing, 'Intelligent machinery', p. 428.
100. Hebb, D. O. (1949) The Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory. New York: John Wiley.
101. Rosenblatt, F. (1957) 'The Perceptron, a Perceiving and Recognizing Automaton', Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory Report No. 85-460-1; (1958) 'The Perceptron: a Theory of Statistical Separability in Cognitive Systems', Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory Report No. VG-1196-G-1; (1958) 'The per- ceptron: a probabilistic model for information storage and organization in the brain' (see note 136); (1959) 'Two theorems of statistical separability in the per- ceptron', in (anon.) Mechanisation of Thought Processes, Vol 1, London: HMSO; (1962) Principles of Neurodynamics, Washington, DC: Spartan.
102. Ross Ashby, W. (1952) Design for a Brain. London: Chapman and Hall.
103. Beurle, R. L. (1957) 'Properties of a mass of cells capable of regenerating pulses', Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B, 240, 55-94.
104. Taylor, W. K. (1956) 'Electrical simulation of some nervous system functional activities', in C. Cherry (ed.) Information Theory. London: Butterworths.
105. Uttley, A. M. 'Conditional probability machines and conditioned reflexes' and 'Temporal and spatial patterns in a conditional probability machine', both in C. E. Shannon and J. McCarthy (eds) (1956) Automata Studies, Princeton: Prin- ceton University Press; and 'Conditional probability computing in a nervous system', in Mechanisation of Thought Processes, Vol 1 (see note 140).
106. Rosenblatt, Principles of Neurodynamics, especially pp. 5 and 12 ff. 146. Hebb, The Organization of Behavior.
107. Rumelhart, D. E., McClelland, J. L., and the PDP Research Group (1986) Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition, Vol 1: Foundations, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; see, for example, pp. 41 ff., 152 ff., 424.
108. The pioneering work of Beurle, Taylor, and Uttley has been neglected almost to the same extent as Turing's. According to connectionist folklore the field of neuron-like computation originated with Rosenblatt, influenced by McCulloch, Pitts, and Hebb. However this is incorrect. Rosenblatt recorded that the 'groundwork of perceptron theory was laid in 1957' (p. 27 of his Principles of Neurodynamics). A series of memoranda by Uttley concerning his probabilistic approach to neuron-like computation survives from as early as 1954 (Uttley, A. M. (1954) 'Conditional Probability Machines and Conditioned Reflexes' (RRE Memorandum No. 1045); (1954) 'The Classification of Signals in the Nervous System' (RRE Memorandum No. 1047); (1954) 'The Probability of Neural Connections' (RRE Memorandum No. 1048); (1954) 'The Stability of a Uniform Population of Neurons' (RRE Memorandum No. 1049). Published accounts of the work of Beurle, Taylor, and Uttley appeared prior to 1957 (see the references given above). Rosenblatt's work was also prefigured in the United States by that of Clark and Farley (Farley, B. G. and Clark, W. A. (1954) 'Simulation of self-organizing systems by digital computer', Institute of Radio Engineers Transactions on Information Theory, 4, 76-84; Clark, W. A. and Farley, B. G. (1955) 'Generalization of pattern recognition in a self-organizing system', Proceedings of the Western Joint Computer Conference, 86-91). In 1954 Clark and Farley simulated a network of threshold units with variable connection weights. The training algorithm (or 'modifier') that they employed to adjust the weights during learning is similar to the algorithms subsequently investigated by Rosenblatt. Rosenblatt acknowledged that 'the mechanism for pattern generalization proposed by Clark and Farley is essentially identical to that found in simple perceptrons' (Principles of Neurodynamics, p. 24).
109. Farley and Clark, 'Simulation of self-organizing systems by digital computer'.
110. McCulloch and Pitts, ' A logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity', p. 129 (see note 29).
111. Taub (ed.), Collected Works of John von Neumann, Vol 5, p. 319.
112. McCulloch and Pitts, ' A logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity', pp. 119, 123-4.
113. Wiener, N. (1948) Cybernetics. New York: John Wiley, p. 32.
114. Gandy in interview with Copeland (November 1995).
115. Manchester Guardian, 11 June 1954.
116. McCulloch and Pitts, ' A logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity', pp. 117, 124.
117. Turing considered other modifications, in particular sensory input lines and internal memory units.
118. Turing, 'Intelligent machinery', p. 425.
119. Ibid., pp. 426-7.
120. Ibid., pp. 427-8.
121. Langton, C. G. (1989) ' Artificial life', in C. G. Langton (ed.), Artificial Life: The Proceedings of an Interdisciplinary Workshop on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems. Redwood City, CA: Addison-Wesley, p. 32.
122. Turing, A. M. (1952) 'The chemical basis of morphogenesis', Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B, 237, 37-72; reprinted in Copeland (ed.), The Essential Turing. Turing employed nonlinear differen- tial equations to describe the chemical interactions hypothesized by his theory and used the Manchester computer to explore instances of such equations. He was probably the first researcher to engage in the computer-assisted explora- tion of nonlinear systems. It was not until Benoit Mandelbrot's discovery of the 'Mandelbrot set' in 1979 that the computer-assisted investigation of nonlinear systems gained widespread attention.
123. Letter from Turing to Woodger, undated, marked as received on 12 February 1951 (in the Woodger Papers; a digital facsimile is in The Turing Archive for the History of Computing <www.AlanTuring.net/turing_woodger_feb51>).
124. 8 February 1951. A copy of Turing's letter (typed by his mother, Sara Turing) is in the Modern Archive Centre, King's College, Cambridge (catalogue reference K1.78).
125. These are in the Modern Archive Centre, King's College, Cambridge (catalogue reference C 24-C 27).