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Author Topic: A Turing Machine  (Read 326 times)

Psidefect

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A Turing Machine
« on: March 26, 2010, 01:51:04 PM »
"In Alan Turing’s 1936 paper on computable numbers, he presented a thought experiment. Turing describes a machine that has an infinitely long tape upon which it writes, reads and alters symbols. He further shows that a machine with the correct minimal set of operations can calculate anything that is computable, no matter the complexity."

This gave me a nerdgasm.

He built an actual Turing Machine. I remember wondering if anyone had ever done this when I learned about them. I always assumed it had been done tons of times. Anyway, this thing is sweet. For all of you non-nerds reading this, just trust me. ;)
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flipper

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Re: A Turing Machine
« Reply #1 on: March 26, 2010, 02:53:32 PM »
Nice!
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bit zero

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Re: A Turing Machine
« Reply #2 on: March 26, 2010, 03:09:51 PM »
One can only wonder what else Turing would have done had he not been driven to suicide :p

At least Claude Shannon had a long life.

Without those two people, we'd have a lot fewer gadgets.
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random axe

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Re: A Turing Machine
« Reply #3 on: March 26, 2010, 03:17:48 PM »
I used to have a lot of old Popular Mechanics Presents and whatnot shows on VHS.  God knows where they are now.  But one of them had film of grad students working with an AWESOME full-room rod-logic mechanical computer.  

It looked like a tennis court filled with a clockwork Rube Goldberg machine made entirely of brass Tinker Toys.  There wasn't any original sound with the film footage (it was probably shot without sound), but you could imagine the hum-hum-hum-click of the thing.  It had like sixty-jillion moving parts.

My younger brother has a Thinking Machine that he got free when a university computer lab was throwing it away.  It's easily the most awesome-looking desktop computer I've ever seen.  The only time I saw it up and running, he had it doing something equivalent to a screen saver, without a monitor attached, but each side of it had like 64 little red lights blinking on and off . . . .



edit:  I guess it's actually called a Connection Machine.  Sample pics here, for instance.
« Last Edit: March 26, 2010, 03:19:45 PM by random axe »
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stormneedle

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Re: A Turing Machine
« Reply #4 on: March 26, 2010, 03:26:12 PM »
Very nice find, Hoss. I loved automata theory in college.
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Psidefect

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Re: A Turing Machine
« Reply #5 on: March 26, 2010, 03:37:35 PM »
Automata were one of the things that resonated with me too.

That and I like saying pumping lemma. ;)
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mo

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Re: A Turing Machine
« Reply #6 on: March 26, 2010, 03:42:52 PM »
This reminds me of this year's Turing award winner. I saw an article about him winning the award that linked to another story, that lead to a pdf of an interview with him, and his story was so fascinating, I got really sucked into it, not even understanding half of what he was talking about  :P I guess the thing that fascinated me so much was this guy kind of starting off in a machine shop, and then ending up being involved, or in some cases just being a witness, to so many developments.

http://www.budiu.info/blog/2007/02/22/an-interview-with-chuck-thacker/ Online version I haven't read - white type on black background  :eyeroll:

http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/accession/102658126 pdf link at bottom of page

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