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quotes [Turing, Wiener]

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@ -31,3 +31,30 @@ ORIGIN Old English _(ge)recenian_‘recount, relate’, of West Germanic origin;
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![http://www.tnmoc.org/explore/colossus-gallery](http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/11_02/ColossusoldDM_1000x693.jpg)
> To accomplish reason able results in a reasonable time, it thus became necessary to push the speed of the elementary processes to the maximum, and to avoid interrupting the stream of these processes by steps of an essentially slower nature. It also became necessary to perform the individual processes with so high a degree of accuracy that the enormous repetition of the elementary processes should not bring about a cumulative error so great as to swamp all accuracy. Thus the following requirements were suggested:
1. That the central adding and multiplying apparatus of the computing machine should be numerical, as in an ordinary adding machine, rather than on a basis of measurement, as in the Bush differential analyzer.
2. That these mechanisms, which are essentially switching devices, should depend on electronic tubes rather than on gears or mechanical relays, in order to secure quicker action.
3. That, in accordance with the policy adopted in some existing apparatus of the Bell Telephone Laboratories, it would probably be more economical in apparatus to adopt the scale of two for addition and multiplication, rather than the scale of ten.
4. That the entire sequence of operations be laid out on the machine itself so that there should be no human intervention from the time the data were entered until the final results should be taken off, and that all logical decisions necessary for this should be built into the machine itself.
5. That the machine contain an apparatus for the storage of data which should record them quickly, hold them firmly until erasure, read them quickly, erase them quickly, and then be immediately available for the storage of new material.
-- Norber Wiener, _Cybernetics_ 1948
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> 4. Digital Computers
> The idea behind digital computers may be explained by saying that these machines are intended to carry out any operations which could be done by a human computer. The human computer is supposed to be following fixed rules; he has no authority to deviate from them in any detail. We may suppose that these rules are supplied in a book, which is altered whenever he is put on to a new job. He has also an unlimited supply of paper on which he does his calculations. He may also do his multiplications and additions on a "desk machine," but this is not important.
> [...]
> The book of rules which we have described our human computer as using is of course a convenient fiction. Actual human computers really remember what they have got to do. If one wants to make a machine mimic the behaviour of the human computer in some complex operation one has to ask him how it is done, and then translate the answer into the form of an instruction table. Constructing instruction tables is usually described as "programming." To "programme a machine to carry out the operation A" means to put the appropriate instruction table into the machine so that it will do A.
> An interesting variant on the idea of a digital computer is a "digital computer with a random element." These have instructions involving the throwing of a die or some equivalent electronic process; one such instruction might for instance be, "Throw the die and put the-resulting number into store 1000." Sometimes such a machine is described as having free will (though I would not use this phrase myself), It is not normally possible to determine from observing a machine whether it has a random element, for a similar effect can be produced by such devices as making the choices depend on the digits of the decimal for .
> Most actual digital computers have only a finite store. There is no theoretical difficulty in the idea of a computer with an unlimited store. Of course only a finite part can have been used at any one time. Likewise only a finite amount can have been constructed, but we can imagine more and more being added as required. Such computers have special theoretical interest and will be called infinitive capacity computers.
[Turing, A.M. (1950). Computing machinery and intelligence. Mind, 59, 433-460.](http://loebner.net/Prizef/TuringArticle.html)