My column on Turing and the Invention of the Computer
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 he-computer/abstract. Or if you do not have an ACM subscription, http://www.tomandmaria.com/tom/Writing/CACMActuallyTuringDidNotInventTheComp 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
Keep up the good fight, Tom. You might be amused by this excerpt from a 1970 letter to the editor of ACM that I recently came across: "In glancing over recent publications of the ACM, I was struck by the dearth of papers on the subject of machine organization or architecture. … Apparently the ACM establishment believes, with many others, that von Neumann actually did come down the side of Mt. Sinai with two clay tablets under his arm." Janet Dr. Janet Abbate Associate Professor, Science & Technology in Society Co-director, National Capital Region STS program Virginia Tech www.sts.vt.edu/ncr www.linkedin.com/groups/STS-Virginia-Tech-4565055 www.facebook.com/VirginiaTechSTS On Jan 17, 2014, at 3:47 21PM, 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 he-computer/abstract. Or if you do not have an ACM subscription, http://www.tomandmaria.com/tom/Writing/CACMActuallyTuringDidNotInventTheComp 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
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
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 he-computer/abstract. Or if you do not have an ACM subscription,
http://www.tomandmaria.com/tom/Writing/CACMActuallyTuringDidNotInventTheComp 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
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org <javascript:;>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
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@gmail.com [mailto:billmcmillan@gmail.com] On Behalf Of William McMillan Sent: Friday, January 17, 2014 4:55 PM To: thaigh@computer.org Cc: members@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 _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org <javascript:;> , the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
Thanks, Tom, for that discussion. Some of you may recall the symposium, later a book edited by Rojas and Hashhagen, on "The First Computers." This is off-topic, and I may catch flak for it (no pun intended), but we celebrate Turing for his work in breaking codes, but we vilify the NSA for doing the same thing (only better, apparently!). We set up an agency to break codes, and then we are "shocked, shocked," that they do what we hired them to do. Paul ________________________________________ From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [members-bounces@sigcis.org] on behalf of Thomas Haigh [thaigh@computer.org] Sent: Friday, January 17, 2014 3:47 PM To: members@sigcis.org Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] My column on Turing and the Invention of the Computer 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 https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/1/170862-actually-turing-did-not-invent-t&k=diZKtJPqj4jWksRIF4bjkw%3D%3D%0A&r=iEx95BOSDrL1SbShZgBAew%3D%3D%0A&m=RVGcmMz00sIvrRfBRgPiD2XdYIRltmLCYjTDGufFt1M%3D%0A&s=6eaff8dc3b609859a0df25a0ff016134bac28f24c2eec67ce393d6cc9e0ed6c4 he-computer/abstract. Or if you do not have an ACM subscription, https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://www.tomandmaria.com/tom/Writing/CACMActuallyTuringDidNotInventTheComp&k=diZKtJPqj4jWksRIF4bjkw%3D%3D%0A&r=iEx95BOSDrL1SbShZgBAew%3D%3D%0A&m=RVGcmMz00sIvrRfBRgPiD2XdYIRltmLCYjTDGufFt1M%3D%0A&s=8b5ddd3ec1c19055dbfe1b2a7103e673ff78a746f36fef21160767d399154a92 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 _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/&k=diZKtJPqj4jWksRIF4bjkw%3D%3D%0A&r=iEx95BOSDrL1SbShZgBAew%3D%3D%0A&m=RVGcmMz00sIvrRfBRgPiD2XdYIRltmLCYjTDGufFt1M%3D%0A&s=5832d9cb5a9849e1d412b0f9223e67de06e4179d230014f2e97a2c68b0c6cbfe and you can change your subscription options at https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members&k=diZKtJPqj4jWksRIF4bjkw%3D%3D%0A&r=iEx95BOSDrL1SbShZgBAew%3D%3D%0A&m=RVGcmMz00sIvrRfBRgPiD2XdYIRltmLCYjTDGufFt1M%3D%0A&s=ac31483420cd6f977d29234043c334aa9a899b9aef398966572e5c0efe357983
I'm a few months behind Paul's column and with a slightly different bent. Connecticut's success really does raise questions about the other states and HSS. Jonathan http://hnn.us/article/155592 -- Jonathan Coopersmith Associate Professor Department of History Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843-4326 979.845.7151 979.862.4314 fax http://aggiegaijin.blogspot.com/ Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
participants (5)
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Ceruzzi, Paul -
Janet Abbate -
Jonathan Coopersmith -
Thomas Haigh -
William McMillan