The Universal Computer

Epilogue

We have followed the lives of a group of brilliant innovators spanning three

centuries. All of them in one way or another were concerned with the

nature of human reason. Their individual contributions added up to the

intellectual matrix out of which emerged the all-purpose digital computer.

Except for Turing, none of them had any idea that their work might be

so applied. Leibniz saw far, but not that far. Boole could hardly have

imagined that his algebra of logic would be used to design complex electric

circuits. Frege would have been amazed to find equivalents of his logical

rules incorporated into computer programs for carrying out deductions.

Cantor certainly never anticipated the ramifications of his diagonal method.

Hilbert’s program to