Alan Turing' s electronic brain : the struggle to build the ACE, the world's fastest computer / [edited by] B. Jack Copeland and others.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Copeland, B. Jack, 1950-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Turing, Alan, 1912-1954.

Turing, Alan.

Computers--Great Britain--History.

Computers.

Computer engineering--Great Britain--History.

Computer engineering.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (580 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The mathematical genius Alan Turing, now well known for his crucial wartime role in breaking the ENIGMA code, was the first to conceive of the fundamental principle of the modern computer-the idea of controlling a computing machine's operations by means of a program of coded instructions, stored in the machine's 'memory'. In 1945 Turing drew up his revolutionary design for an electronic computing machine-his Automatic Computing Engine ('ACE'). A pilot model of the ACE ran its firstprogram in 1950 and the production version, the 'DEUCE', went on to become a cornerstone of the fledgling British

Contents:

Cover; Contents; List of Photographs; Contributors; Introduction; Part I: The National Physical Laboratory and the ACE Project; 1. The National Physical Laboratory; 2. The creation of the NPL Mathematics Division; 3. The origins and development of the ACE project; 4. The Pilot ACE at the National Physical Laboratory; Part II: Turing and the History of Computing; 5. Turing and the computer; 6. The ACE and the shaping of British computing; 7. From Turing machine to 'electronic brain'; 8. Computer architecture and the ACE computers; Part III: The ACE Computers

9. The Pilot ACE instruction format 10. Programming the Pilot ACE; 11. The Pilot ACE: from concept to reality; 12. Applications of the Pilot ACE and the DEUCE; 13. The ACE Test Assembly, the Pilot ACE, the Big ACE, and the Bendix G15; 14. The DEUCE-a user's view; 15. The ACE Simulator and the Cybernetic Model; 16. The Pilot Model and the Big ACE on the web; Part IV: Electronics; 17. How valves work; 18. Recollections of early vacuum tube circuits; 19. Circuit design of the Pilot ACE and the Big ACE; Part V: Technical Reports and Lectures on the ACE 1945-47

20. Proposed electronic calculator (1945)21. Notes on memory (1945); 22. The Turing-Wilkinson lecture series (1946-7); 23. The state of the art in electronic digital computing in Britain and the United States (1947); Index;

Notes:

Rev. ed. of: Alan Turing's automatic computing engine / edited by B. Jack Copeland.

Description based on metadata supplied by the publisher and other sources.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-19-162586-8

1-283-57638-4

9786613888839

0-19-164434-X

OCLC:

808366366