Headline Feb 22, 2015/ ''' STUDENT ALAN TURING : THE COMPLICATED GENIUS '''

''' STUDENT ALAN TURING : 

THE COMPLICATED GENIUS '''

ALAN TURING was one of history's greatest inventors, credited with pioneering the idea of a   programmable computers and-

Envisioning the possibility of   Artificial  Intelligence. 

When you tell students and people about him, they rarely know who he is!?

Everything that's been thrown at computers-  all of it has only managed to work because of his idea of creating something universal in the first place.

ALAN TURING had a spiritual side to his work.  He raised questions about FREE WILL  and   

MACHINE  versus  MAN.

AS A PHILOSOPHER, he was profoundly affected by the idea that if we could achieve  artificial intelligence, could-

Artificial intelligence achieve feeling what we call  WILL   itself?

Could it evolve  CONSCIOUSNESS?

Could it become  SELF SELF-AWARE?

Could it make DECISIONS? 

Could it FALL IN LOVE?

TURING had an instinct that there were mathematical statements that were likewise elusive; we could never know whether they were provable or not.

One way of framing the issue was to ask whether there was a  ''mechanical process'' that could be used to determine whether a particular logic statement was provable.

Turing liked the concept of of a ''mechanical process.'' One day in the summer of 1935, he was out for his usual solitary run and stopped to lie down in a grove of apple trees.

He decided to take the notion of a  ''mechanical process'' literally, conjuring up an imaginary machine and applying it to the problem.

The ''Logical computing Machine'' that Turing envisioned  (as a thought experiment, not as a real machine to be built)  was simple at a first glance, but it could handle, in theory, any mathematical computation.

It consisted of an unlimited length of paper tape containing symbols within squares; the machine would be able to read the symbols on the tape and perform certain actions based on a ''table of instructions'' it had been given.

Turing showed that there was no method to determine in advance whether any given set of inputs would lead the machine to arrive at an answer or go into some loop and continue chugging away indefinitely, getting nowhere.

The discovery was useful for the development of mathematical theory.

But more important was the by-product: Turing's concept of Logical Computing Machine, which soon came to be known as a Turing machine.

''It is possible to invent a single machine can be used to compute any any computable sequence,'' he declared.

Turing's interest was more than theoretical , however. Fascinated by ciphers, Turing enlisted in the British effort to break Germany's military codes.

The secret teams set up shop on the grounds of a Victorian manor house in the drab redbrick town of Bletchley.

Turing was assigned to group tackling the Germans' Enigma code, which was generated by the portable machine with mechanical rotors and electrical circuits.

After every  keystroke, it changed the formula for substituting letters.

Alan Turing and his team built a machine called,  ''the bombie,''  that exploited weaknesses in the German coding, including the fact that no letter could be enciphered as itself and that there were certain phrases that the Germans used repeatedly.

By  August 1940, Turing's team had  bombes  that could decipher German messages about the deployment of the  U-boats that were decimating British supply convoys.

The bombe was not a significant advance in computer technology.

The Honour and Serving of the  ''operational research''  continues. Thank you for reading and see Ya all on the following one.

With respectful dedications to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world teaching Engineering and Technology. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

''' A Reactor '''

'''Good Night and God Bless

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