22The Turing Machine
One of the greatest names in the history of math is Alan Turing (1912--1954). Turing was an amazing man who worked in a ton of different areas, most specifically in mathematical logic. At the heart of his most well-known work in computation is a theoretical machine that he designed as a model of mechanical computation, which is named the Turing machine in his honor.
The Turing machine isn’t a model of real computers. The computer that I’m using to write this book has absolutely nothing to do with the Turing machine in any practical sense. As a real device, the Turing machine is absolutely terrible. But that’s because it was never intended to be a real machine!
The Turing machine is a mathematical model not of computers ...
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