PROGRAMMING REVOLUTION
OF ALAN TURING

In the early1900s, “computers” were people who did calculations. But mathematics was largely based on faith that the axioms and theorems that the computers used stood on a foundation of logic that could some day be understood and described. Mathematicians and logicians sought a process by which they could prove that every problem had an algorithm capable of solving it. For example, in the first decade of the 1900s Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell wrote the first three volumes of Principia Mathematica to provide a language capable of providing a logical foundation from which all solutions could be derived. Unfortunately, as they progressed, the logic of their language began to collapse. Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theory suggested that any complex logical structure such as that found in Principia Mathematica can never be complete and is logically unsupportable, and their fourth volume was never published.

Alan Turing contributed to this argument in 1933 with a suggestion that a purely logistic view of mathematics was inadequate. Mathematical propositions posses interpretations of which logic is only one. Although the above describes Turing’s attitude toward mathematics, it also points to a certain openness in his thinking that leads to more important innovations for contemporary computing. For example, if mathematics is not purely logistic, it might be used for information exchange – communication.

Turing continued by creating a conceptual process that came to be called “the Turing Machine.” Conceptually, the Turing Machine includes a specialized program as one of its components. The programming occurs on a short bit of telegraphic tape designed to tell a machine how to make yes/no decisions. It is, however, a very small step from the concept of programming for a specialized purpose to programming for any specialized purpose.

Many historians suggest that before this, computers were nothing more than large calculators. Only with the advent of programming, did computers as we know them begin. Next

ASSIGNMENT:

Find an example of a proto-computer not discussed in this document and describe it in a few paragraphs configured to resemble a scetion in a technical book.

For more information on Alan Turing check out his biography by J. J. O'Connor and E. F. Robertson.

Alan Turing. Application for permission to use.

For more information on Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead, check out the story of Principia Mathematica.