Contributions to Digital Computing of Alan Turring Essay

Currently, computers are used for everything in life. For example, from researching for a large essay project to playing video games with friends. “From the outset, computers were weighed for both military and commercial significance, and hence they straddled the very institutional boundaries that central to this study. It is also significant that computers became valuable research instruments in nearly all disciplines.” (Akera, 2). The first digital computer was constructed in 1946 by John Mauchly, a professor, and Presper Eckert, an inventor. “They met by chance in 1941 at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Engineering. They soon developed a revolutionary vision: to use electricity as a means of computing--in other words, to make electricity "think."” (McCartney, 1). They were ignored by their colleagues, but in 1943 they were becoming more well known and was funded by the U.S Army. The U.S Army was seeking for a contraption that can quickly calculate ballistic missile trajectories in wartime Europe and Africa (McCartney, 1). John Mauchly and Presper Eckert led a team that constructed the computer that occupied 1,800 square feet and weighed thirty tons. They named the large computer, ENIAC, Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. The process of building this machine was not an effortless task, Mauchly and Presper and their team had to overcome many problems

     The Turing Test has had a rich history since its creation by Alan Turing. But first of all, who was Alan Turing? As Whitby notes Alan Turing was a superb British mathematician. During World War II Turing worked in secrecy for the British military to break the German military codes together with some other scientists using some machines that had some characteristics of the modern computers.(12) After the War, a machine was built in Manchester from which “all modern computers are descended”.(12) In 1948, Alan Turing was writing programs for this machine and was also writing the paper “Computing machinery and intelligence”, published in 1950, from which the concept of the Turing Test was derived later on. (Whitby 13).

Along with Carr using the extrinsic truth, he also made sure to include the intrinsic aspect to each example. The digital computer spoken of in the section wasn’t invented at the time, therefore Turing was only but assuming. Carr said in his article that Alan Turing proved the functions of the computer, but gives no details into how he proved it.

Turing, a physicalist, believed that artificial intelligence could be achieved in the future. Turing argued that the mind was merely due to the physical aspects of the brain and so a machine could one day be created that has a mind of its own, i.e. artificial intelligence. He created a test called the Turing Test to determine whether a machine has artificial intelligence. In the Turing Test, an interrogator asks two subjects a series of questions. One of the subjects is a person, the other is the computer. The goal is for the person to imitate a computer and the computer to imitate the person. If the interrogator is fooled into thinking that the computer is the human then the computer, according to Turing, is concluded to have the ability to think and thus, have a mind. Turing argued that machines passing the Turing Test were sufficient for ascribing thought.

The 1940’s was the beginning of an era of computers ruling us. It all started with Konrad Zuse a German engineer creates and finishes the computer called Z3 built in 1941 it was built using 2,300 relays, and used a floating point binary arithmetic, and had a 22 bit word length. Although the original was destroyed in a bombing run in Berlin in late 1943. He supervised a reconstruction of his invention in the 60's which is on display at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. In February of 1946 the ENIAC was released and the public was able to view it, built by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert they improved it by 1,000 times since the first computers were released. Started in 1943 it took 3 years to complete and it used a plugboard and switch program, and the speed was about 5,000 operations per second. It took up 1,000 square feet, or the size of a small house! In 1944 the Harvard Mark-1 was completed. Thought by the Harvard professor Howard Aiken, and built by IBM, the dimensions of this beast was room sized, relay-based calculator. Also it had a

In a world that is currently dominated by computers, it’s hard to imagine what it was like before they were invented. Though computers only began having a major influence in the last 60 years, the idea for them was first conceived almost 200 years ago. This technology would not have been possible without the work of Ada Lovelace, who is considered one of the pioneers in the field of computer programming. She had a vision of the possible benefits and capabilities of a computing machine. Even though she would never see her vision become a reality, her legacy and work had a lasting impact on the future of technology. However, during her lifetime she experienced multiple setbacks in pursuing her education

Today, the Turing Bombe is not used by the military, yet the machine inspires and reminds of the importance of sciences as World War II was won with the help of the scientific community. Now, the machines are exposed in the British Museum and are part of history. Soldiers and scientific community fought against the Nazis. After World War II, Alan Turing continued to devote himself for his passion of sciences, cryptanalysis, and computers. For instance, Turing is known as the father-creator of computers as in 1941, he designed the Colossus computer (Notes). In addition, he is recognized as an important figure in the scientific community and contributed largely to everyone’s lives, as computers are indispensable in today’s generation.

Alan Mathison Turing was born in Paddington, London on June 23, 1912. At a young age he displayed many signs of high intelligence. When his parents and teachers saw this, they sent him to the very prestigious Sherborne School at only thirteen years old. There, he studied math and science which sparked his interest for computers and coding. After finishing his studies at Sherborne, he enrolled at King’s College, or what is now known as the University of Cambridge. As he attended school there from 1931 to 1934, he developed a certain respect for physics and, more specifically, quantum-mechanics in which he proved the central limit theorem. His accomplishment was so massive that he graduated as a fellow at the school. Alan Turing, using his extensive

In 1936 Alan Turing, an English mathematical and a logician created the “Turing machine” (Copeland, 2000) which was originally created for the purpose a mathematical tool, it represented a computing device that contained a read/write head or a scanner with a paper tape passing through it. This machine could

Ada Lovelace worked with Charles Babbage to develop what would become the first computer by writing the algorithms needed to make computers work. She checked Babbage’s work and found errors in his system, helping to design the computer. Lovelace is considered the first

He was discovered and forced to undergo hormonal therapy that severely messed with his mind and body. Alan Turing ended up committing suicide on June 7th 1954. The end of the film says that “Historians estimate that breaking enigma shortened the war by more than two years saving over 14 million lives.” Alan Turing’s genius and strength should never be over looked or underestimated because without him millions of people would have perished and an entire scientific field might not even exist. Alan theorized a universal machine that wouldn’t just “Be programmable but reprogrammable” (The Imitation Game). They used to be called Turing machines, now a days we call them computers and we use them for almost everything. What this film focuses on is the tag line “Sometimes it’s the very people who no one imagines anything of, who do the things that no one can imagine” and they stick with that theme by focusing on Alan and his life not just enigma. While the game he invented was for testing for artificial intelligence, Moore uses it to show how people can be different but still do incredible things, and that’s okay. Alan Turing was this incredibly brilliant and strong man who just so happened to also be homosexual. He did all of these incredible and wonderful things but because of prejudice and people refusing to accept the differences of others this great mind was silenced. Telling the story of Alan Turing

On his essay “Can machines think?” Alan Turing, a great mathematician, and creator of the Turing Test presents us with the initial concept of what is now considered artificial intelligence. He states that eventually, as time progresses, machines will be able to think like humans. But, can a machine really think like a human? Can a machine even think on its own, or it is just based on human science and engineering to make computer systems perform tasks that require intelligence when done by humans?

　　The key period of the evolution of modern electronic computer is in between the late 1930s and the early 1950s. Not all of them were invented by the mathematician or physician. Among those machines were pioneering computers put together by english academics notably Manchester/Ferrenti Mark 1, built at Manchester University by Frederic Williams and Thomas Kilburn. And the EDSAC, Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator built by Maurice Wilkes at Cambridge University.

Alan Turing was a famous British mathematician and computer scientist who was determined to prove that machines at some point (possibly sometime in the future) would be able to surpass humans in intelligence levels. In order to prove this true, he created what became to be known as, “The Turing Test.” This test was basically to see if a computer could trick a person into believing that it was human. It would be asked a series of questions, which would be compared to responses of the human. It was designed so that one could judge the intelligence level of the computers’ responses. Turing believed that if a human could not tell the difference between another human and a computer, then it served as proof that a computer is equally intelligent as a human. Due to a large

World War 2 is where the field of Computer Science made its first leap out of the shadows of Mathematics. It was thanks to the military need to safely test new weapons of mass destruction with the use of computer simulations that computers got their first push. The military’s desire to encrypt information that a team of humans could not decipher in a reasonable amount of time also helped give rise to machines that could do more complex work than a single human and complete them in faster times than a team of humans. It was various world governments looking to save man power and resources that lead to the shift toward machines, that would one day be computers, working for us.