[SIGCIS-Members] My column on Turing and the Invention of the Computer

[Thomas Haigh]

Thanks Bill,

 

I agree that if Turing had been the first to build a general purpose programmable mechanical digital computer then he would certainly deserve to be remembered as the inventor of such. Whether or not that would be “the computer” is a question we historians long ago decided to avoid.

 

The addressable memory, op codes, etc. become critical because Turing didn’t build a machine in the 1930s. The argument for Turing as the father of the *modern* computer or *stored program* computer follows a rather tortuous path:

 

Turing 1936 paper à Stored program concept à John von Neumann à First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC à Actual modern computers

 

Thus this argument rests on the idea that the crucial thing that the builders of actual computers got from the First Draft was an idea that von Neumann had borrowed from Turing’s 1936 paper. That’s why it becomes important to figure out what the influential and novel ideas in the First Draft actually were, and whether any of them could plausibly be argued to come from Turing.

 

Best wishes,

 

Tom

 

From: billmcmillan at gmail.com [mailto:billmcmillan at gmail.com] On Behalf Of William McMillan
Sent: Friday, January 17, 2014 4:55 PM
To: thaigh at computer.org
Cc: members at sigcis.org
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] My column on Turing and the Invention of the Computer

 

I read your article with interest, Tom, as soon as CACM came in the mail  Nice job of distinguishing the idea from the thing.

 

I'm not sure that the lack of an addressable memory, explicit opcodes, etc. are that crtical.  If Turing had actually built a Turing machine (a limited version -- hard to find tapes of infinite length) then it would be fair to say he invented the computer. 

 

Those who thought of mechanical flight can't be said to have invented the airplane.

 

With a computer, it's harder to define "flight."  That's what Turing did.

 

Bill

On Friday, January 17, 2014, Thomas Haigh wrote:

Hello everyone,

You may be interested in my newly published Communications of the ACM Column
"Actually, Turing Did Not Invent the Computer." (It was supposed to be
"didn't'" but I think that was an informality too far for the ACM).

You can read it at
http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/1/170862-actually-turing-did-not-invent-t <http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/1/170862-actually-turing-did-not-invent-the-computer/abstract> 
he-computer/abstract. Or if you do not have an ACM subscription,
http://www.tomandmaria.com/tom/Writing/CACMActuallyTuringDidNotInventTheComp <http://www.tomandmaria.com/tom/Writing/CACMActuallyTuringDidNotInventTheComputer.pdf> 
uter.pdf.

This had its origins in my presentation of some of my ongoing work on ENIAC
over the summer, where I was discussing the different clusters of ideas
found in von Neumann's 1945 "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC." I'd
expected that any questions about the attribution of these ideas to von
Neumann would come from partisans shouting that he had merely stolen the
ideas of Eckert and Mauchly and had preemptively noted that while the credit
for these ideas had been disputed the impact of the report hadn't.

Instead, all anyone wanted to talk about was how von Neumann had taken the
ideas from. Turing! Further investigation revealed that a series of
increasingly tenuous claims about the similarity between Turing's famous
paper and the "First Draft" had been spreading in recent years, reaching a
peak with Turing's recent centenary. Professionally trained historians of
computing largely moved on from the events of the 1940s a generation ago,
leaving the history of early computing to computer scientists, philosophers,
logicians, and the partisans of various famous machines and their inventors.
(This is beginning to change again, fortunately). I think also that the
public really has room in its collective memory for just one famous person
per technology, usually its inventor. Thus if someone has heard of Turing
doing something famous with computers then they are likely to assume he
invented the computer.

Hence the need for a concise and balanced assessment of the actual
situation. The paper is indebted to discussions with many of you on this
topic, including Paul Ceruzzi, David Hemmendinger, Edgar G. Daylight, Pierre
Mounier Kuhn, and my collaborator on the ENIAC project Mark Priestley.

Best wishes,

Tom


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