Turing's pre-war analog computers: the fatherhood of the modern computer revisited

Abstract

Turing's machines of 1936 were a purely mathematical notion, not an exploration of possible blueprints for physical calculators.

References

1. Aspray, W. John von Neumann and the Origins of Modern Computing. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1990.
2. Booker, A.R. Turing and the primes. In The Once and Future Turing: Computing the Worldy, S.B. Cooper and A. Hodges, Eds. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K., 2016, 34--50.
3. Bruderer, H. Meilensteine der Rechentechnik. Zur Geschichte der Mathematik und der Informatik. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin/Boston, 2015.
4. Church, A. Review: A.M. Turing, on computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem. Journal of Symbolic Logic 2, 1 (1937), 42--43.
5. Comrie, L.J. The application of the Hollerith tabulating machine to Brown's tables of the moon. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 92, 7 (1932), 694--707.
6. Copeland, B.J., Ed. The Essential Turing. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2004.
7. Copeland, B.J., Ed. Alan Turing's Automatic Computing Engine. The Master Codebreaker's Struggle to Build the Modern Computer. Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K., 2005.
8. Copeland, B.J. and Proudfoot, D. Alan Turing: Father of the modern computer. Rutherford Journal 4 (2011--2012).
9. Copeland, B.J. and Sommaruga, G. The stored-program universal computer: Did Zuse anticipate Turing and von Neumann? In Turing's Revolution. The Impact of His Ideas about Computability, G. Sommaruga and T. Strahm, Eds. Springer International Publishing, Cham, Switzerland, 2015, 43--101.
10. Croarken, M. Table making by committee: British table makers 1371--1965. In The History of Mathematical Tables: From Sumer to Spreadsheets, R.F.M. Campbell-Kelly, M. Croarken, and E. Robson, Eds. Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K., 2003, 235--267.
11. Daylight, E.G. A Turing tale. Commun. ACM, 57, 10 (Oct. 2014), 36--38.
12. Daylight, E.G. Towards a historical notion of 'Turing: The father of computer science.' History and Philosophy of Logic 36, 3 (Sept. 2015), 205--228.
13. DeMol, L. Closing the circle: An analysis of Emil Post's early work. The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 12, 2 (June 2006), 267--289.
14. Feferman, S. Turing's thesis. Notices of the American Mathematical Society 53, 10 (Nov. 2006), 2--8.
15. Haigh, T. Actually, Turing did not invent the computer. Commun. ACM 57, 1 (Jan. 2014), 36--41.
16. Haigh, T., Priestley, M., and Rope, C. Reconsidering the stored-program concept. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 36, 1 (Jan.-Mar. 2014), 4--17.
17. Hejhala, D.A. and Odlyzko, A.M. Alan Turing and the Riemann zeta function. In Alan Turing: His Work and Impact, S.B. Cooper and J. van Leeuwen, Eds. Elsevier Science, Waltham, MA, 2013, 265--279.
18. Hodges, A. The Alan Turing Internet Scrapbook. Who Invented the Computer?; http://www.turing.org.uk/scrapbook/computer.html
19. Hodges, A. Alan Turing: The logical and physical basis of computing. In Proceedings of the 2004 International Conference on Alan Mathison Turing: A Celebration of his Life and Achievements (Swinton, U.K.). British Computer Society, London, U.K., 2004.
20. Hodges, A. Did Turing have a thesis about machines? In Church's Thesis After 70 Years, J.W.A. Olszewski and R. Janusz, Eds. Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 2006, 242--252.
21. Hodges, A. Alan Turing: The Enigma. The Book that Inspired the Film 'The Imitation Game.' Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2014.
22. Sieg, W. Gödel on computability. Philosophia Mathematica 14, 2 (Jan. 2006), 189--207.
23. Small, J.S. The Analogue Alternative: The Electric Analogue Computer in Britain and the USA, 1930--1975. Routledge, London, U.K., 2001.
24. Titchmarsh, E.C. The zeros of the Riemann zeta-function. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 151, 873 (Sept. 1935), 234--255.
25. Titchmarsh, E.C. The zeros of the Riemann zeta-function. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 157, 891 (Nov. 1936), 261--263.
26. Turing, A.M. Proposed Electronic Calculator (report submitted to the Executive Committee of the National Physical Laboratory), 1945; republished in Copeland, B.J, Ed.,^{<zref=R7>7<zrefx>} 369--454.
27. Turing, A.M. On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem. Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society 42, 1 (Nov. 1937), 230--265.
28. Turing, A.M. Systems of logic based on ordinals. Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society 45, 1 (Jan. 1939), 161--228.
29. Turing, A.M. Some calculations of the Riemann zeta-function. Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society 3, 3 (Jan. 1953), 99--117.
30. von Neumann, J. First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC. Technical Report. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 1945.
31. Watson A.G.D. Mathematics and its foundations. Mind 47, 188 (Oct. 1938), 440--451.

Index Terms

• Computer systems organization

  • Architectures

• Hardware

  • Electronic design automation

• Mathematics of computing

  • Information theory

• Software and its engineering

• Theory of computation

  • Models of computation