...the Babbage difference engine number 2: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7391593.stm
A quote from the article: "... in the 1930s where pioneers of the electronic computer age reinvented all the essential principles of computing largely in ignorance of Babbage's designs." This sounds wrong to me. The essential property of a Turing machine is that it is universal - it can be programmed to become any machine - and Turing provided the mathematical basis which led to the later physical implementations. The Babbage machines were not universal machines, and certainly not Turing machines, nor did Babbage provide any such mathematical basis for future computing, and to that extent his work was a fascinating dead end. Anyway, it's an interesting article and it will be interesting for those of you in the area to see the machine. Bob -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
