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Mark Sprevak
''The Turing Guide'', written by Jack Copeland, Jonathan Bowen, Mark Sprevak, Robin Wilson, and others and published in 2017, is a book about the work and life of the British mathematician, philosopher, and early computer scientist, Alan Turing (1912–1954). Overview The book includes 42 contributed chapters by a variety of authors, including some contemporaries of Alan Turing. The book was published in January 2017 by Oxford University Press, in hardcover, paperback, and e-book formats. Contents ''The Turing Guide'' is divided into eight main parts, covering various aspects of Alan Turing's life and work: # ''Biography'': Biographical aspects of Alan Turing. # ''The Universal Machine and Beyond'': Turing's universal machine (now known as a Turing machine), developed while at King's College, Cambridge, which provides a theoretical framework for reasoning about computation, a starting point for the field of theoretical computer science. # ''Codebreaker'': Turing's work on cod ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jack Copeland
Brian Jack Copeland (born 1950) is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, and author of books on the computing pioneer Alan Turing. Education Copeland was educated at the University of Oxford, obtaining a Bachelor of Philosophy degree and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1978, where he undertook research on modal logic and non-classical logic supervised by Dana Scott. Career and research Jack Copeland is the Director of the Turing Archive for the History of Computing, an extensive online archive on the computing pioneer Alan Turing. He has also written and edited books on Turing. He is one of the people responsible for identifying the concept of hypercomputation and machines more capable than Turing machines. With Jason Long he restored some of the first computer music recorded on the Ferranti Mark I. Copeland has held visiting professorships at the University of Sydney, Australia (1997, 2002), the University of Aarhus, Denma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
King's College, Cambridge
King's College, formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, is a List of colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the city. King's was founded in 1441 by King Henry VI of England, Henry VI soon after founding its sister institution, Eton College. Initially, King's accepted only students from Eton College. However, the king's plans for King's College were disrupted by the Wars of the Roses and the resultant scarcity of funds, and then his eventual deposition. Little progress was made on the project until 1508, when King Henry VII of England, Henry VII began to take an interest in the college, probably as a political move to legitimise his new position. The building of the college's chapel began in 1446, and was finished in 1544 during the reign of Henry VIII. King's College Chapel, Cambridge, King's College Chap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ferranti Mark 1
The Ferranti Mark 1, also known as the Manchester Electronic Computer in its sales literature, and thus sometimes called the Manchester Ferranti, was produced by British electrical engineering firm Ferranti Ltd. It was the world's first commercially available electronic general-purpose stored-program digital computer. Although preceded as a commercial digital computer by the BINAC and the Z4, the Z4 was electromechanical and lacked software programmability, while BINAC never operated successfully after delivery. The Ferranti Mark 1 was "the tidied up and commercialised version of the Manchester Mark I". The first machine was delivered to the Victoria University of Manchester in February 1951 (publicly demonstrated in July) ahead of the UNIVAC I which was delivered to the United States Census Bureau in late December 1952, having been sold on 31 March 1951. History and specifications Based on the Manchester Mark 1, which was designed at the University of Manchester by Fred ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manchester Mark 1
The Manchester Mark 1 was one of the earliest stored-program computers, developed at the Victoria University of Manchester, England from the Manchester Baby (operational in June 1948). Work began in August 1948, and the first version was operational by April 1949; a program written to search for Mersenne primes ran error-free for nine hours on the night of 16/17 June 1949. The machine's successful operation was widely reported in the British press, which used the phrase "electronic brain" in describing it to their readers. That description provoked a reaction from the head of the University of Manchester's Department of Neurosurgery, the start of a long-running debate as to whether an electronic computer could ever be truly creative. The Mark 1 was to provide a computing resource within the university, to allow researchers to gain experience in the practical use of computers, but it very quickly also became a prototype on which the design of Ferranti's commercial version coul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manchester Baby
The Manchester Baby, also called the Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), was the first electronic stored-program computer. It was built at the University of Manchester by Frederic Calland Williams, Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn, and Geoff Tootill, and ran its first program on 21 June 1948. The Baby was not intended to be a practical computing engine, but was instead designed as a testbed for the Williams tube, the first truly random-access memory. Described as "small and primitive" 50 years after its creation, it was the first working machine to contain all the elements essential to a modern electronic digital computer. As soon as the Baby had demonstrated the feasibility of its design, a project was initiated at the university to develop it into a full-scale operational machine, the . The Mark 1 in turn quickly became the prototype for the Ferranti Mark 1, the world's first commercially available general-purpose computer. The Baby had a 32-bit Word (computer architect ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pilot ACE
The Pilot ACE (Automatic Computing Engine) was one of the first computers built in the United Kingdom. Built at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in the early 1950s, it was also one of the earliest general-purpose, stored-program computers – joining other UK designs like the Manchester Mark 1 and EDSAC of the same era. It was a preliminary version of the full ACE, which was designed by Alan Turing, who left NPL before the construction was completed. History Pilot ACE was built to be a cut-down version of Turing's full ACE design. After Turing left NPL (in part because he was disillusioned by the lack of progress on building the ACE), James H. Wilkinson took over the project. Donald Davies, Harry Huskey and Mike Woodger were involved with the design. The Pilot ACE ran its first program on 10 May 1950, and was demonstrated to the press in November 1950. Although originally intended as a prototype, it became clear that the machine was a potentially useful resource, esp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ACE Computer
The Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) was a British early electronic serial stored-program computer design by Alan Turing. Turing completed the ambitious design in late 1945, having had experience in the years prior with the secret Colossus computer at Bletchley Park. The ACE was not built, but a smaller version, the Pilot ACE, was constructed at the National Physical Laboratory and became operational in 1950. A larger implementation of the ACE design was the MOSAIC computer which became operational in 1955. ACE also led to the Bendix G-15 and other computers. Background The project was managed by John R. Womersley, superintendent of the Mathematics Division of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL). The use of the word ''Engine'' was in homage to Charles Babbage and his Difference Engine and Analytical Engine. Turing's technical design ''Proposed Electronic Calculator'' was the product of his theoretical work in 1936 " On Computable Numbers" (and ) and his wartime experi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of Manchester
The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is considered a red brick university, a product of the civic university movement of the late 19th century. The current University of Manchester was formed in 2004 following the merger of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) and the Victoria University of Manchester. This followed a century of the two institutions working closely with one another. Additionally, the university owns and operates major cultural assets such as the Manchester Museum, The Whitworth art gallery, the John Rylands Library, the Tabley House, Tabley House Collection and the Jodrell Bank Observatory – a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology had its origins in the Manchester Mechan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom)
The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is the national measurement standards laboratory of the United Kingdom. It sets and maintains physical standards for British industry. Founded in 1900, the NPL is one of the oldest metrology institutes in the world. Research and development work at the laboratory has contributed to the advancement of many disciplines of science, including the development of early computers in the late 1940s and 1950s, construction of the first accurate atomic clock in 1955, and the invention and first implementation of packet switching in the 1960s, which is today one of the fundamental technologies of the Internet. The former heads of NPL include many individuals who were pillars of the British scientific establishment. NPL is based at Bushy Park in Teddington, southwest London. It is operated by NPL Management Ltd, a company owned by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and is one of the most extensive government laboratories in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Enigma Machine
The Enigma machine is a cipher device developed and used in the early- to mid-20th century to protect commercial, diplomatic, and military communication. It was employed extensively by Nazi Germany during World War II, in all branches of the Wehrmacht, German military. The Enigma machine was considered so secure that it was used to encipher the most top-secret messages. The Enigma has an electromechanical Rotor machine, rotor mechanism that scrambles the 26 letters of the alphabet. In typical use, one person enters text on the Enigma's keyboard and another person writes down which of the 26 lights above the keyboard illuminated at each key press. If plaintext is entered, the illuminated letters are the ciphertext. Entering ciphertext transforms it back into readable plaintext. The rotor mechanism changes the electrical connections between the keys and the lights with each keypress. The security of the system depends on machine settings that were generally changed daily, based ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bombe
The bombe () was an Electromechanics, electro-mechanical device used by British cryptologists to help decipher German Enigma machine, Enigma-machine-encrypted secret messages during World War II. The United States Navy, US Navy and United States Army, US Army later produced their own machines to the same functional specification, albeit engineered differently both from each other and from Polish and British bombes. The British bombe was developed from a device known as the "Bomba (cryptography), bomba" (), which had been designed in Poland at the Biuro Szyfrów (Cipher Bureau) by cryptologist Marian Rejewski, who had been breaking German Enigma machine, Enigma messages for the previous seven years, using it and earlier machines. The initial design of the British bombe was produced in 1939 at the UK Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park by Alan Turing, with an important refinement devised in 1940 by Gordon Welchman. The engineering design and construction ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an English country house and Bletchley Park estate, estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes (Buckinghamshire), that became the principal centre of Allies of World War II, Allied World War II cryptography, code-breaking during the Second World War. During World War II, the estate housed the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), which regularly penetrated the secret communications of the Axis Powers most importantly the German Enigma machine, Enigma and Lorenz cipher, Lorenz ciphers. The GC&CS team of codebreakers included John Tiltman, Dilwyn Knox, Alan Turing, Harry Golombek, Gordon Welchman, Conel Hugh O'Donel Alexander, Hugh Alexander, Donald Michie, W. T. Tutte, Bill Tutte and Stuart Milner-Barry. The team at Bletchley Park devised automatic machinery to help with decryption, culminating in the development of Colossus computer, Colossus, the world's first programmable digital electronic computer. Codebreaking operations at Bletchley Park ended in 1946 and al ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
