steve@hubcap.clemson.edu ("Steve" Stevenson) (01/16/91)
In a class I'm teaching, I was trying to get the students into the historical context in the 1920-1940 time frame. The Atansoff computer was probably known to Alan Turing. Did this help in his formulation? Did he ever say where the ideas came from? What other machines were there then that might have contributed to his formulation?-- =============================================================================== Steve (really "D. E.") Stevenson steve@hubcap.clemson.edu Department of Computer Science, (803)656-5880.mabell Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634-1906
colwell@omews1.intel.com (Robert Colwell) (01/16/91)
In article <12623@hubcap.clemson.edu> steve@hubcap.clemson.edu ("Steve" Stevenson) writes: >In a class I'm teaching, I was trying to get the students into the historical >context in the 1920-1940 time frame. The Atansoff computer was probably >known to Alan Turing. Did this help in his formulation? Did he ever say where >the ideas came from? What other machines were there then that might have >contributed to his formulation?-- Tell 'em to read "Alan Turing: The Enigma", a good biography of Turing. Fascinating, in fact, in its assertions that if Turing and Wilkes had been able to get along, the computer industry might have lived in the UK for the last twenty years instead of the US. I suspect that the author of this biography had a hidden agenda of attacking society's treatment of homosexuals (for those who don't know, Turing was homosexual, and was arrested for it after naively reporting a theft from his house by a man he had befriended). But the technical details of what Turing had to work with back then and what he managed to do with it is astonishing. Well worth reading. Bob Colwell colwell@mipon2.intel.com 503-696-4550 Intel Corp. JF1-19 5200 NE Elam Young Parkway Hillsboro, Oregon 97124
dc@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Daniel Cohen) (01/16/91)
The background to Turing's work is well discussed in the book: "Turing: the enigma of intelligence", I think it's by Hodges ( e-mail me if you want a proper reference; it's at home ). The gist of the answer would be that the concept of the Turing machine did not derive from any actual computing devices, but from a generalisation of how a human being does computation - essentially, by looking at pieces of paper ( squares on a tape ), and adjusting context accordingly ( changing state ). This approach came about because Turing was interested in the famous Hilbert problem ( one of 23 ) concerned with the decidability of mathematical questions. Of course, that doesn't mean that Turing was uninterested in the practicalities of mechanical computation; he had an interest in analogue computers and was later the leading light behind the ACE. But I believe that the foundations for his work were mathematical, not practical computers. -- Daniel Cohen Department of Computer Science Email: dc@cs.qmw.ac.uk Queen Mary and Westfield College Tel: +44 71 975 5249/4/5 Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK Fax: +44 81 980 6533 *** Hit the North!!! ***
William.Lott@CS.CMU.EDU (01/17/91)
colwell@omews1.intel.com (Robert Colwell) writes: > In article <12623@hubcap.clemson.edu> steve@hubcap.clemson.edu ("Steve" Steven\ > son) writes: > >In a class I'm teaching, I was trying to get the students into the historical > >context in the 1920-1940 time frame. The Atansoff computer was probably > >known to Alan Turing. Did this help in his formulation? Did he ever say where > >the ideas came from? What other machines were there then that might have > >contributed to his formulation?-- > > Tell 'em to read "Alan Turing: The Enigma", a good biography of Turing. One should also read "Atansoff, the Forgotten Father of the Computer" (or something like that) to make sure credit is attributed where credit is due. Or at least to become aware that there is some disagreement about where credit is due. -William Lott ps: Apparently Atansoff rented a room from my great grandparents. If I'm remembering stories I've heard correctly, my grandmother once was trapped in the bathroom in only her underware because Atansoff was patiently waiting in the hall for his turn. (I know this doesn't have much to do with Architecture, but I found it amusing.)
bill@mwca.UUCP (Bill Sheppard) (01/18/91)
Actually, it's Atanasoff, not Atansoff.
(Just a proud graduate of Iowa State thrilled to see the recognition due
Atanasoff being received. I've got his signature in his previously mentioned
autobiography, as he made a campus visit during my senior year.)
--
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# Bill Sheppard -- bills@microware.com -- {uunet,sun}!mcrware!mwca!bill #
# Microware Systems Corporation --- OS-9: Seven generations beyond __/_!! #
#######Opinions expressed are my own, though you'd be wise to adopt them!#######aa1@j.cc.purdue.edu (Saul Rosen) (01/24/91)
In article <1991Jan19.234454.26225@eecs.wsu.edu> pcooper@yoda.UUCP (Phil Cooper - CS495) writes: >In article <1991Jan16.165251.3783@sctc.com> smith@sctc.com (Rick Smith) writes: >>steve@hubcap.clemson.edu ("Steve" Stevenson) writes: >> >>> The Atansoff computer was probably known to Alan Turing. > ^^^^^^^^ > I'm not 100% sure, but I believe the man's name is Atanasoff > >> >>This is a fascinating statement, but your use of the word "probably" >>implies that you lack hard evidence. Is there any evidence to support >>this statement? >> Turing wrote his famous paper on computable numbers in 1935-36. In it he introduced his conceptual computer that has come to be known as the Turing machine. The Universal Turing Machine that he introduced in the same paper can be considered to be a conceptual or even a mathematical model of the real universal computers (e.g. the EDVAC) that appeared about 10 years later. It is not clear whether Turing's ideas had any direct effect on the Edvac. However, it is known that von Neumann knew Turing while Turing was a graduate student at Princeton in 1937-39. Atanasoff started to work on his machine, later known as the ABC computer in 1937-38, and worked on a prototype in 1939. I don't think it is at all likely that Turing ever knew anything about the Atanasoff computer, even after World War II when Turing designed the real hardware ACE computer. The above dates show that Turing's work on computability preceded the work of Atanasoff. Note also that the Atanasoff computer was not a programmed general purpose computer, and thus its concepts were in no way related to the very general programming concepts introduced by Turing in his 1936 paper. Saul Rosen
des@frogland.inmos.co.uk (David Shepherd) (01/24/91)
If you go to the Deutches Museum in Munich there is quite a sizeable
exhibition on the history of calculating machines and computers. The
general thrust of the historical overview there is that the modern
computer was invented in Germany (also, given the amount of ancient
equipment donated by them, the biggest computer company is something
called IBM Deutchland). Amongst the vast amount of info about the
German fathers of computing is one small notice which basically
states that this person in England called Alan Turing was working
on similar ideas and that he did something quite important around
the early 1940s but for some reason they don't actually say
what that was :-)
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david shepherd: des@inmos.co.uk or des@inmos.com tel: 0454-616616 x 529
inmos ltd, 1000 aztec west, almondsbury, bristol, bs12 4sq
phevbfvgl xvyyrq gur pngsrc@scuzzy.in-berlin.de (Heiko Blume) (01/26/91)
des@frogland.inmos.co.uk (David Shepherd) writes: >If you go to the Deutches Museum in Munich there is quite a sizeable >exhibition on the history of calculating machines and computers. in Berlin there is a *working* rebuild of the Z-3 done by Grand Wazoo Zuse himself. it's in the "Museum fuer Verkehr und Technik". -- Heiko Blume <-+-> src@scuzzy.in-berlin.de <-+-> (+49 30) 691 88 93 public source archive [HST V.42bis]: scuzzy Any ACU,f 38400 6919520 gin:--gin: nuucp sword: nuucp uucp scuzzy!/src/README /your/home