Thursday, February 09, 2012

Turing's Enduring Importance - Technology Review

Check the full article for a synopsis of Turing’s life and work

Many histories of computing give the impression that it was a straightforward set of engineering decisions to use punch cards, then relays, then tubes, and finally transistors to build computing machines. But it wasn't. General-purpose machines required Turing's fundamental insight that data and code can be represented the same way. And keep in mind that all of today's computers were developed with the help of slower computers, which in turn were designed with slower computers still. If Turing had not made his discovery when he did, the computer revolution might have been delayed by decades.

Turing's Enduring Importance - Technology Review

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