The Universal Computer, 3rd Edition

Preface

This book is about the underlying concepts on which our modern computers are based and about the people who developed these concepts. In the spring of 1951, shortly after completing my doctorate in mathematical logic at Princeton University where Alan Turing worked a decade earlier, I was teaching a course at the University of Illinois based on his ideas. A young mathematician who attended my lectures called my attention to a pair of machines being constructed across the street from my classroom that he insisted were embodiments of Turing’s conception. It was not long before I found myself writing software for early computers. My professional career spanning half a century revolved around this relationship between the abstract logical ...