The Universal Computer

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 himself had worked a decade

earlier, I was teaching a course at the University of Illinois based on his

ideas. A young mathematician who had been attending my lectures called

my attention to a pair of machines being constructed across the street

from my classroom that he insisted were physical embodiments of Turing’s

conception. It was not long before I found myself writing software for

these early computers. My professional career, spanning half a century,

has revolved around this relationship ...