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From: colwell@omews1.intel.com (Robert Colwell)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: What were real machines which helped Turing?
Message-ID: <1991Jan15.213202.29370@omews63.intel.com>
Date: 15 Jan 91 21:32:02 GMT
References: <12623@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Sender: news@omews63.intel.com (News Account)
Reply-To: colwell@mipon2.intel.com (Robert Colwell)
Organization: Intel Corp., Hillsboro, Oregon
Lines: 22

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