Alan Turing's Manual for the Ferranti Mk. I Alan M. Turing

Alan M. Turing
Год: 2000
Количество страниц: 96
Язык: Английский
Формат: PDF / RAR

Формат файла: RAR

This is a transcription of a very interesting document from the early history of computer science — Alan Turing's manual for an early computer built by the English firm Ferranti as a commercialized version of the prototype computer which had been developed by the Manchester University staff. Turing had moved to Manchester from the National Physical Laboratory (where he had been, for a time, architect of the ACE computer project and responsible for the rather unusual architecture of the ACE). At the time he wrote this manual, he was in charge of what we would now call system programming for the machine, including the development of common tools and the establishment of conventions for library routines.
This was the first of at least three manuals for the machine, and was apparently written before the machine was fully installed and operating (the library input routines, for instance, are described in the future tense, and the description of auxiliary paper-tape-handling hardware is frankly speculative). It was quickly superseded by a second manual for the machine, incorporating some of the material from this one (the introductory material was more or less intact), and adding a description of a second set of conventions for shuffling routines from the disk into electronic storage ("Scheme B"; Turing's original routines were described in the second manual as "Scheme A"), and a couple of interpretive routines. The table of contents of the second manual, and the complete first chapter, are on line at http://www.computer50.org/mark1/; the direct link is http://www.computer50.org/kgill/mark1/mark1book.html.