Alan Turing · Mathematics
How Alan Turing, in 1936, captured the very idea of mechanical computation in a single imaginary device - a machine reading and writing symbols on an endless tape - and thereby founded the theory of computation.
You learned how Turing defined computation precisely by imagining an abstract machine that reads and writes symbols on a tape according to fixed rules. Explain what a Turing machine is and why this simple device captures the essence of all mechanical computation.
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