The essential Turing
Journal Data
| Type | SOURCE_BOOK |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (GB) |
| ISBN-13 | 9780198250791 |
| Open Library | OL8010409W |
| Total publications | 17 |
| Coverage period | 2004 - 2004 |
| Language | EN |
"Alan Turing, pioneer of computing and World War II code-breaker, was one of the most important and influential thinkers of the twentieth century. The astonishing output of his tragically short life included the universal Turing Machine (the theoretical foundation of all modern computing), the electro-mechanical 'bombes' used at Bletchley Park to decipher the Enigma code, his ground-breaking design for an electronic stored-programme computer, and work on artificial intelligence and artificial life so revolutionary that he can claim to be the founding father of these disciplines. In this book, Turing's key writings in all these subjects are made easily accessible for the first time. Lectures, scientific papers, top secret wartime material, correspondence, and broadcasts are introduced and set in context by Jack Copeland, Director of the Turing Archive for the History of Computing."--Jacket.
History of Hut 8 to December 1941 (1945)
Patrick Mahon (A. P. Mahon) was born on 18 April 1921, the son of C. P. Mahon, Chief Cashier of the Bank of England from 1925 to 1930 and Comptroller from 1929 to 1932. From 1934 to 1939 he attended Marlborough College before going up to Clare College, Cambridge, in October 1939 to read Modern Languages. In July 1941, having achieved a First in both German and French in the Modern Languages Part II, he joined the Army, serving as a private (actin…
Can Automatic Calculating Machines Be Said To Think? (1952)
This discussion between Turing, Newman, R. B. Braithwaite, and G. Jefferson was recorded by the BBC on 10 January 1952 and broadcast on BBC Radio on the 14th, and again on the 23rd, of that month. This is the earliest known recorded discussion of artificial intelligence. The anchor man of the discussion is Richard Braithwaite (1900–90). Braithwaite was at the time Sidgwick Lecturer in Moral Science at the University of Cambridge, where the follow…
Lecture on the Automatic Computing Engine (1947)
On 8 December 1943 the world’s first large-scale special-purpose electronic digital computer—‘Colossus’, as it became known—went into operation at the Government Code and Cypher School (see ‘Computable Numbers: A Guide’, ‘Enigma’, and the introduction to Chapter 4). Colossus was built by Thomas H. Flowers and his team of engineers at the Post Office Research Station in Doll is Hill, London. Until relatively recently, few had any idea that electro…
Bombe and Spider (1940)
This material forms chapter 6 of Turing’s Treatise on the Enigma (known at Bletchley Park as ‘Prof ’s Book’). The text has been prepared by Ralph Erskine, Philip Marks and Frode weierud from the two known surviving copies of Turing’s original typescript. The pagination of Turing’s typescript indicates that the chapter may possibly have continued for a further four pages; however, these pages are not to be found in either of the archived copies. W…
Computing Machinery and Intelligence (1950)
Together with ‘On Computable Numbers’, ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’ forms Turing’s best-known work. This elegant and sometimes amusing essay was originally published in 1950 in the leading philosophy journal Mind. Turing’s friend Robin Gandy (like Turing a mathematical logician) said that ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’... was intended not so much as a penetrating contribution to philosophy but as propaganda. Turing thought the t…
Letters on Logic to Max Newman (c.1940)
At the outbreak of war with Germany in September 1939, Turing left Cambridge to take up work as a codebreaker at Bletchley Park, the wartime headquarters of the Government Code and Cypher School (see ‘Enigma’, below). In the early months of 1940, Turing received a letter from the Cambridge mathematician M. H. A. Newman, his teacher, colleague, and friend. Turing replied on 23 March, writing from his lodgings at the Crown Inn (situated in the smal…
On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem (1936)
The ‘‘computable’’ numbers may be described briefly as the real numbers whose expressions as a decimal are calculable by finite means. Although the subject of this paper is ostensibly the computable numbers, it is almost equally easy to define and investigate computable functions of an integral variable or a real or computable variable, computable predicates, and so forth. The fundamental problems involved are, however, the same in each case, and…
The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis (1952)
It is suggested that a system of chemical substances, called morphogens, reacting together and diffusing through a tissue, is adequate to account for the main phenomena of morphogenesis. Such a system, although it may originally be quite homogenous, may later develop a pattern or structure due to an instability of the homogeneous equilibrium, which is triggered off by random disturbances. Such reaction-diffusion systems are considered in some det…
Memorandum to OP-20-G on Naval Enigma ( c .1941)
The document that forms this chapter was written by Alan Turing and sent to the US Navy codebreaking unit, OP-20-G, in Washington, DC, probably to the celebrated cryptanalyst Mrs Agnes Driscoll. It is undated, but was probably dispatched in the autumn of 1941. Turing solved the indicating system of the principal Naval Enigma cipher, Heimisch (codenamed ‘Dolphin’ by the Government Code and Cypher School (GC & CS)), at Bletchley Park by the end of …
Chess (1953)
Chess and some other board games are a test-bed for ideas in Artificial Intelligence. Donald Michie—Turing’s wartime colleague and subsequently founder of the Department of Machine Intelligence and Perception at the University of Edinburgh—explains the relevance of chess to AI: Computer chess has been described as the Drosophila melanogaster of machine intelligence. Just as Thomas Hunt Morgan and his colleagues were able to exploit the special li…
Can Digital Computers Think? (1951)
The lecture ‘Can Digital Computers Think?’ was broadcast on BBC Radio on 15 May 1951, and was repeated on 3 July of that year. (Sara Turing relates that Turing did not listen to the Wrst broadcast but did ‘pluck up courage’ to listen to the repeat.) Turing’s was the second lecture in a series with the general title ‘Automatic Calculating Machines’. Other speakers in the series included Newman, D. R. Hartree, M. V. Wilkes, and F. C. Williams. Turi…
Intelligent Machinery, A Heretical Theory (c.1951)
Turing gave the presentation ‘Intelligent Machinery, A Heretical Theory’ on a radio discussion programme called The ’51 Society. Named after the year in which the programme first went to air, The ’51 Society was produced by the BBC Home Service at their Manchester studio and ran for several years. A presentation by the week’s guest would be followed by a panel discussion. Regulars on the panel included Max Newman, Professor of Mathematics at Manc…
Intelligent Machinery (1948)
By the beginning of 1947 much effort had gone into writing programmes or ‘instruction tables’ for the ACE. In ‘Proposed Electronic Calculator’, Turing had said that work on instruction tables should start immediately, since the ‘earlier stages of the making of instruction tables will have serious repercussions on the design [of the machine]’; moreover, the programming work should ‘go on whilst the machine is being built, in order to avoid some of…
Letter to Winston Churchill (1941)
During 1941, codebreaking at Bletchley Park was hindered by shortages of typists and unskilled staff. These shortages could have been easily rectified, but the codebreakers’ urgent requests were ignored by offcials in Whitehall. Going over the heads of those in command at GC & CS, Turing and his co-signatories wrote directly to the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. On receiving the letter Churchill minuted his Chief of Staff, General Ismay: ‘act…
No prominent publications on this page.
History of Hut 8 to December 1941 (1945)
Patrick Mahon (A. P. Mahon) was born on 18 April 1921, the son of C. P. Mahon, Chief Cashier of the Bank of England from 1925 to 1930 and Comptroller from 1929 to 1932. From 1934 to 1939 he attended Marlborough College before going up to Clare College, Cambridge, in October 1939 to read Modern Languages. In July 1941, having achieved a First in both German and French in the Modern Languages Part II, he joined the Army, serving as a private (actin…
Can Automatic Calculating Machines Be Said To Think? (1952)
This discussion between Turing, Newman, R. B. Braithwaite, and G. Jefferson was recorded by the BBC on 10 January 1952 and broadcast on BBC Radio on the 14th, and again on the 23rd, of that month. This is the earliest known recorded discussion of artificial intelligence. The anchor man of the discussion is Richard Braithwaite (1900–90). Braithwaite was at the time Sidgwick Lecturer in Moral Science at the University of Cambridge, where the follow…
Lecture on the Automatic Computing Engine (1947)
On 8 December 1943 the world’s first large-scale special-purpose electronic digital computer—‘Colossus’, as it became known—went into operation at the Government Code and Cypher School (see ‘Computable Numbers: A Guide’, ‘Enigma’, and the introduction to Chapter 4). Colossus was built by Thomas H. Flowers and his team of engineers at the Post Office Research Station in Doll is Hill, London. Until relatively recently, few had any idea that electro…
Bombe and Spider (1940)
This material forms chapter 6 of Turing’s Treatise on the Enigma (known at Bletchley Park as ‘Prof ’s Book’). The text has been prepared by Ralph Erskine, Philip Marks and Frode weierud from the two known surviving copies of Turing’s original typescript. The pagination of Turing’s typescript indicates that the chapter may possibly have continued for a further four pages; however, these pages are not to be found in either of the archived copies. W…
Computing Machinery and Intelligence (1950)
Together with ‘On Computable Numbers’, ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’ forms Turing’s best-known work. This elegant and sometimes amusing essay was originally published in 1950 in the leading philosophy journal Mind. Turing’s friend Robin Gandy (like Turing a mathematical logician) said that ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’... was intended not so much as a penetrating contribution to philosophy but as propaganda. Turing thought the t…
Letters on Logic to Max Newman (c.1940)
At the outbreak of war with Germany in September 1939, Turing left Cambridge to take up work as a codebreaker at Bletchley Park, the wartime headquarters of the Government Code and Cypher School (see ‘Enigma’, below). In the early months of 1940, Turing received a letter from the Cambridge mathematician M. H. A. Newman, his teacher, colleague, and friend. Turing replied on 23 March, writing from his lodgings at the Crown Inn (situated in the smal…
On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem (1936)
The ‘‘computable’’ numbers may be described briefly as the real numbers whose expressions as a decimal are calculable by finite means. Although the subject of this paper is ostensibly the computable numbers, it is almost equally easy to define and investigate computable functions of an integral variable or a real or computable variable, computable predicates, and so forth. The fundamental problems involved are, however, the same in each case, and…
The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis (1952)
It is suggested that a system of chemical substances, called morphogens, reacting together and diffusing through a tissue, is adequate to account for the main phenomena of morphogenesis. Such a system, although it may originally be quite homogenous, may later develop a pattern or structure due to an instability of the homogeneous equilibrium, which is triggered off by random disturbances. Such reaction-diffusion systems are considered in some det…
Memorandum to OP-20-G on Naval Enigma ( c .1941)
The document that forms this chapter was written by Alan Turing and sent to the US Navy codebreaking unit, OP-20-G, in Washington, DC, probably to the celebrated cryptanalyst Mrs Agnes Driscoll. It is undated, but was probably dispatched in the autumn of 1941. Turing solved the indicating system of the principal Naval Enigma cipher, Heimisch (codenamed ‘Dolphin’ by the Government Code and Cypher School (GC & CS)), at Bletchley Park by the end of …
Chess (1953)
Chess and some other board games are a test-bed for ideas in Artificial Intelligence. Donald Michie—Turing’s wartime colleague and subsequently founder of the Department of Machine Intelligence and Perception at the University of Edinburgh—explains the relevance of chess to AI: Computer chess has been described as the Drosophila melanogaster of machine intelligence. Just as Thomas Hunt Morgan and his colleagues were able to exploit the special li…
Can Digital Computers Think? (1951)
The lecture ‘Can Digital Computers Think?’ was broadcast on BBC Radio on 15 May 1951, and was repeated on 3 July of that year. (Sara Turing relates that Turing did not listen to the Wrst broadcast but did ‘pluck up courage’ to listen to the repeat.) Turing’s was the second lecture in a series with the general title ‘Automatic Calculating Machines’. Other speakers in the series included Newman, D. R. Hartree, M. V. Wilkes, and F. C. Williams. Turi…
Intelligent Machinery, A Heretical Theory (c.1951)
Turing gave the presentation ‘Intelligent Machinery, A Heretical Theory’ on a radio discussion programme called The ’51 Society. Named after the year in which the programme first went to air, The ’51 Society was produced by the BBC Home Service at their Manchester studio and ran for several years. A presentation by the week’s guest would be followed by a panel discussion. Regulars on the panel included Max Newman, Professor of Mathematics at Manc…
Intelligent Machinery (1948)
By the beginning of 1947 much effort had gone into writing programmes or ‘instruction tables’ for the ACE. In ‘Proposed Electronic Calculator’, Turing had said that work on instruction tables should start immediately, since the ‘earlier stages of the making of instruction tables will have serious repercussions on the design [of the machine]’; moreover, the programming work should ‘go on whilst the machine is being built, in order to avoid some of…
Letter to Winston Churchill (1941)
During 1941, codebreaking at Bletchley Park was hindered by shortages of typists and unskilled staff. These shortages could have been easily rectified, but the codebreakers’ urgent requests were ignored by offcials in Whitehall. Going over the heads of those in command at GC & CS, Turing and his co-signatories wrote directly to the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. On receiving the letter Churchill minuted his Chief of Staff, General Ismay: ‘act…