The power of ideasCharles BabbageIn July of 1822, Babbage wrote a letter to the president of the Royal Society, describing his plan for calculating and printing mathematical tables by machine.

By June of 1823 Babbage met with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who granted money and told Babbage to proceed with the engine But no minutes were made of this initial meeting.

The power of ideasCharles Babbage

In 1829 a group of Babbage's friends solicited the attention of the Duke of Wellington, then Prime Minister.

Wellington went to see a model of the engine, and in December ordered a grant of £3,000.

The power of ideasCharles Babbage

"One of Babbage's most serious flaws was his inability to stop tinkering.

No sooner would he send a drawing to the machine shop than he would find a better way to perform the task and would order work stopped until he had finished pursuing the new line.

By and large this flaw kept Babbage from ever finishing anything."

The power of ideasCharles Babbage

Only five years after Babbage's death, an obscure inventor called George Barnard Grant exhibited a full-sized difference engine of his own devising at the Philadelphia Centennial Fair.

Grant's machine was 8 feet wide, 5 feet tall, and contained over 15,000 moving parts.

The power of ideasThe difference engine

The power of ideasAda Lovelace Working with Babbage was

Augusta Ada Lovelace,

Ada, was one of the few people who fully understood Babbage's vision,

She created a program for the Analytical Engine.

The power of ideasAda Lovelace Based on this work, Ada

is now credited as being the first computer programmer.

In 1979, a modern programming language was named ADA in her honor.

The power of ideasAlan Turing In the 1940’s Turing helped pioneer the concept of the digital computer.

The Turing Machine that he envisioned is essentially the same as today's multi-purpose computers.

The power of ideasThe Turing Machine

The machine consists of a read/write head that scans a (possibly infinite) one-dimensional (bi-directional) tape divided into squares, each of which is inscribed with a 0 or 1.

Computation begins with the machine, in a given "state", scanning a square. It erases what it finds there, prints a 0 or 1, moves to an adjacent square, and goes into a new state.

The power of ideasThe Turing Machine The best way to understand this

machine is to build and TRY to run it.

The power of ideasThe Turing Machine

Start # skip # right

Skip 1 skip 1 right

Skip 0 skip 1 right

Skip # back # left

Back 1 back # left

state, symbol new_state, new_symbol left/right

The power of ideasThe Turing Machine

Start # skip # right

Skip 1 skip 1 right

Skip 0 skip 1 right

Skip # back # left

Back 1 back # left

state, symbol new_state, new_symbol left/right

The power of ideasThe Turing Machine

Start # skip # right

Skip 1 skip 1 right

Skip 0 skip 1 right

Skip # back # left

Back 1 back # left

state, symbol new_state, new_symbol left/right

The power of ideasThe Turing Machine

Start # skip # right

Skip 1 skip 1 right

Skip 0 skip 1 right

Skip # back # left

Back 1 back # Back

state, symbol new_state, new_symbol left/right

The power of ideasThe Turing Machine

Start # skip # right

Skip 1 skip 1 right

Skip 0 skip 1 right

Skip # back # left

Back 1 back # Back

state, symbol new_state, new_symbol left/right

The power of ideasAlan Turing During World War II, Turing used his mathematical skills to decipher the codes the Germans were using to communicate.

This was difficult because the Germans had developed a machine called the Enigma.

It was able to generate a constantly changing code that was impossible for the code breakers to decipher quickly.

The power of ideasAlan Turing

In 1950 Turing devised the "Turing Test." The test consisted of a person asking questions via keyboard to both a person and an intelligent machine.

He believed that if the person could not tell the machine apart from the person after a reasonable amount of time, the machine was intelligent.

The power of ideasAlan Turing

The 1987 edition of the Oxford Companion to the Mind describes the Turing test as

"the best test we have for confirming the presence of intelligence in a machine."

A CHAT WITH JABBERWACKYJabber: I need more sleepJo: Do you like to sleep?Jabber: YesJo: Do you have dreams?Jabber: I think I am having a bad one right nowJo:That is not very niceJabber: But it's true. Face it

(BBC)

The power of ideas The Turing Test

The power of ideas The Turing Test

Regular users of SMS chat may be shocked to find out that they are swapping messages with machines rather than young women and men.

But it's a fair bet that they are because the Natachata chatbot, written by former rocket scientist Simon Luttrell, is so widely used by chat merchants.

At its busiest Natachata handles 15 messages per second. A typical "session" lasts about seven or eight messages and each SMS costs more than £1. (BBC)

Exercise

What will you use computers for in 5 years time?

Can machines be intelligent?