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Alan Mathison Turing (1912 - 1954)

Alan Turing was a cryptographer. He helped Britain break the German Enigma machines in WWII. He also invented a concept of a type of computer, called a "Turing Machine."

Alan Turing was found dead at age 42.


Turing Machines

Introduced by Alan Turing in 1936, Turing machines are one of the key abstractions used in modern computability theory, the study of what computers can and cannot do. A Turing machine is a particularly simple kind of computer, one whose operations are limited to reading and writing symbols on a tape, or moving along the tape to the left or right.


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Turing Machines
Turing Machines