IN 1935, Alan Turing set out to build a reputation by outflanking the world’s leading mathematician. Turing was 22 years old, and a new fellow at Cambridge. His target, David Hilbert, was the ...

When he invented Turing machines in 1936, Alan Turing also invented modern computing. In 1928, the German mathematicians David Hilbert and Wilhelm Ackermann proposed a question called the ...

In computer science and blockchain technology, the term “Turing completeness” describes a system’s ability to carry out any computation that a Turing machine is capable of. A Turing machine is a ...

For several years, [Jim] has wanted to construct a fully-mechanical universal Turing machine. Without the help of any electronic circuits or electrical input, his goal was to build the machine using ...