Computer Related / Electronics / logic / etc.

Non-Digital Computers

Non-Digital Computers This is the last installment of my many-part series on computers. Last time we used the notion of a Turing machine to define what a computer is. We discovered something surprising: that not all computers need to be digital, or even electronic! A computer can be mechanical,  made of dominoes, or even just a rules system in a card game. To give you of a flavor of how inclusive the definition of a computer really is, I’ll now give you a whirlwind tour of some notable examples of non-digital computers. The Antikythera Mechanism In April of 1900,

Computer Related / Education / logic / etc.

What Is A Computer, Really?

Look at the picture above. Believe it or not, that person is operating an extremely sophisticated mechanical calculator, capable of generating tables that evaluate functions called “polynomials.” Although a graphing calculator can do that, a pocket calculator certainly can’t. The device above is a mechanical purpose-built computer! This article is the next installment of my series on computing. In the previous parts, we learned about Boolean logic, the language computers think in. We then learned how to implement this logic electronically and, using our newfound understanding of electronics, how to make computer memory so that computers can record results

Computer Related / logic / Mathematics / etc.

The Turing Machine

This is the sixth part in my multi-part series on computing. In the previous parts, we learned about Boolean logic, the language computers think in. We then learned how to implement this logic electronically. And finally, we learned how to make computer memory, so that computers can record results of calculations. Now before we conclude the series, we’re going to take a quick detour into computational theory and the Turing machine. Alan Turing’s Machine of the Mind In 1936, mathematician, WWII codebreaker, and all around awesome guy Alan Turing wanted to investigate a problem in formal logic. Specifically, he