What about Babbage’s Analytical Engine, which would have been turing-complete had it been constructed? Although it took a Countess to figure out that programming could be a thing…
I see your point (I sometimes get the same feeling), but if you think about it, it’d be much more astonishing if someone built a universal computer before having the idea of a universal computer. It’s not really common to build something much more complex than a hand ax by accident. Natural phenomena are often discovered like that, but machines are usually imagined a long time before we can actually build them.
Yeah, that’s a good point. Turing must have been one of the first people to realize that there’s a “maximum amount of flexibility” a computer can have, so to speak, where it’s so flexible it can do anything that any computer can.
I’m actually surprised that Turing machines were invented before anyone ever built an actual computer.
What about Babbage’s Analytical Engine, which would have been turing-complete had it been constructed? Although it took a Countess to figure out that programming could be a thing…
I see your point (I sometimes get the same feeling), but if you think about it, it’d be much more astonishing if someone built a universal computer before having the idea of a universal computer. It’s not really common to build something much more complex than a hand ax by accident. Natural phenomena are often discovered like that, but machines are usually imagined a long time before we can actually build them.
Yeah, that’s a good point. Turing must have been one of the first people to realize that there’s a “maximum amount of flexibility” a computer can have, so to speak, where it’s so flexible it can do anything that any computer can.