Bilkent ACM SIGART (Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence)
video,
Abstract: This, the first of a three part documentary tracing the development of the modern electronic digital computer, begins in the late 1930's with Zuse's relay-based machines. While Hitler refused further funding for work on a valve-based machine, saying it was unnecessary since the war was already practically won, the American and British governments continued development.
In America, Eckart and Mauchly of the
University of Pennsilvania, built ENIAC to help compute firing
tables for the army. John von Neumann joined them, but,
unfortunately, the machine was not completed until 1946, too late
to help in the war effort. They later left the university and
set-up in business producing computers they called UNIVAC
(Universal Automatic Computers.)
In Britain, a top secret group working at Bletchley Park, successfully produced a number of machines which cracked German codes, enabling the Allies to decipher wartime messages. Alan Turing, whose seminal paper on computing machines appeared a decade before ENIAC, played a leading role in this work, which also set the scene for later developments at Mancester where the first stored-program computer was built by Freddy Williams. At Cambridge, Maurice Wilkes improved on the Manchester design to provide the foundation upon which commercial exploitation of the computer would begin in Britain.
But Turing's imagination had already leapt far beyond such mundane number crunching applications. He was far more interested in exploring the computers theoretical limits, its potential for playing games and writing poetry, and its relation to the human mind.
Thursday, 24th April. 1997 at 16:40 Room: B-Block Amphi (Eng. Building)
Everyone Welcome