计算史

Computer/Network History Timeline

1820－1830年，Faraday: work on electro-magnetic Induction 1837 Samuel Morse Invented Morse Code

18 Maxwell equations （Maxwell's equations represent one of the most elegant and concise ways to state the fundamentals of electricity and magnetism. From them one can develop most of the working relationships in the field. Because of their concise statement, they embody a high level of mathematical sophistication.）

and

1876 Alexander Graham Bell Patented telephone, 1877 Bell Co. 14 Marconi invents wireless telegraphy. 1934 Radar is invented in the UK.

1936 Alan Turing, in his momentous paper \"On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungs problem\simple devices. He proved that some such machine would be capable of performing any conceivable mathematical problem if it were representable as an algorithm. 1938 TV

1942 Claude E. Shannon, Information theory

1943 ENIAC（electronic numerical integrator and computer）started; In England, appeared a cipher-breaking machine called Tunny (later replaced by the Colossus) 1944 June 1, the first Colossus Mark II machine operational at Bletchley Park,UK. in total 10 Colossii are built. 1945 John Von Neumann， 101- page First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC. With very few exceptions, all present-day home computers, micro, mini and mainframe computers use this single-memory computer architecture。

1946 ENIAC formally accept in US army;- First commercial mobile telephone service put into service, linking moving vehicles to the telephone network by radio. 1947 Transistor at Bell

1948 The Manchester Mark 1 (\"Baby\"), the first stored program computer, is completed by a team led by Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn. 1950 Alan Turing 《The Imitation Game》

1951 The first commercially available electronic computer.-UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) is delivered.

1957 Soviet Russia launches Sputnik-1, the Earth's first artificial satellite and Sputnik 2, carrying the dog Laika.

1958 IC at Texas Instruments, Jack St. Clair Kilby comes up with the idea of

creating a monolithic device (integrated circuit) on a single piece of silicon.

1961 May 31, PhD thesis on queuing theory in message-forwarding (packet-switched) communication networks: Leonard Kleinrock, Information Flow in Large Communication Nets, May 31, 1961, MIT

1963 July 10, Telstar, the world's first international communications satellite, was rocketed into orbit.

ASCII, the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is standardized; 19 Packet-switching networks with no single outage point are described by Paul Baran, On Distributed Communications, RAND Corporation.

-Gordon Moore suggests that integrated circuits would double in complexity every year. This later becomes known as Moore's Law.

1965 Donald Watts Davies, a physicist at the British NPL (National Physical Lab), writes the first of several notes about a computer network much like Baran's. Davies gives a lecture in London describing the notion of sending short blocks of data, called packets, through a digital store-and-forward network. A man from the Ministry of Defence tells Davies about Paul Baran's work.

Davies is the one who came up with the term packet-switching. Although he is later embarrassed to find out that Baran had got there first, he consoled himself with the fact that at least he \"got the name\". Baran's version was called distributed adaptive message block switching.

1966 Charles Kao, born in China, in his PhD thesis estimates that glass fibers need to have an optic signal attenuation of less than 20 dB per kilometer to be useful for long distance communication. (cf 1970);

1967 Stanley Milgram, a sociologist at Harvard University in the US, claims that any person in the world can be traced to any other by a chain of five or six acquaintances. ( \"six degrees of separation\" after a Broadway play and movie)

1969 October, 25th, the first host-to-host connection is made between the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), through the IMPs developed by BBN （APARNET）.

Bill Gates and Paul Allen, ( \"Lakeside Programming Group\" ) sign an agreement with Computer Center Corporation to report bugs in PDP-10 software.

Man walks on moon. Neil Armstrong's first words from the moon are relayed to Earth by a Motorola radio transponder aboard the Apollo 11 lunar module. The transponder provides telemetry, tracking, two-way voice communications and television signal transmissions between Earth and the moon.

1971 Commission of the European Community passes resolution to create a network to be called Euronet.

1972 in Washington, DC, the ARPAnet (The Advanced Research Projects Agency) is demonstrated for the public at ICCC (the International Conference on Computer Communication). Ray Tomlinson of BBN (Bolt Beranek and Newman, a company who played a major role in the creation of the Internet.) writes an e-mail program for the ARPAnet and introduces the notation \"user@host\".

1973 A PhD thesis lays the foundation for the Ethernet at Xerox PARC. (Republished: Robert M. Metcalfe, (Packet Communication, May 1996, Peer to Peer

Communications, ISBN 1573980331.)

--The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is presented at the International Networking Group (INWG) conference in England.

--First international connections to ARPAnet are created in England and Norway. 1974 First Use of term \"Internet\" appears in a conference paper by Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn.

1976 AT&T installs its first digital telephone switch.

At Berkeley (UCB), the TCP/IP protocols are incorporated into Unix, in a DARPA-sponsored project.

Ethernet, which allows coaxial cable to move data extremely fast, is described by Robert M. Metcalfe

1978 Hayes begins to sell the first commercial modem, capable of 300 baud.

1981 The first commercial Ethernet network interface card is marketed by Ungermann-Bass.

National Science Foundation backbone goes up to connect U.S. universities to ARPAnet.

The Internet Working Group plans the transition from NCP to TCP/IP.

1983 Microsoft first demonstrates \"Interface Manager,\" later renamed Windows. ARPAnet begins using TCP/IP.

1986 A Tannenbaum: Minix (open version of Unix)

1988 Transatlantic telephone cable TAT-8 is installed, the first to use fiber optic technology.

19 At the European Nuclear Research Center (CERN), Tim Berners Lee proposes the introduction of a networked hypertext system, thereby inventing the World Wide Web.

1990 Motorola unveils the Iridium System concept for global personal communications. It will use an array of 77 small satellites in low-Earth orbit, (named after the iridium atom, which has 77 electrons). ARPAnet is formally closed.

The Wireless LAN working group IEEE 802.11 is formed .

1991 Gopher released by University of Minnesota (Paul Lindner and Mark McCahill) - a campus-wide document delivery system. Linux 0.01 is released

1992 The Internet connects one million hosts. the Mosaic web browser is developed by students at NCSA.

1993 The first digital mobile network is established in the US.

1994 Netscape Navigator web browser begins shipping. 1995 Yahoo is incorporated, Java, Javascript appears.

1996 The world on an average has 12.8 main and 2.4 cellular telephone lines per 100 inhabitants. Asia and North America have 46 million cellular subscribers each. --XML

1997 IBM's Deep Blue, a 32-node IBM RS/6000 SP supercomputer, defeated World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov, in tournament-style competition

1998 Nokia introduces the Nokia 9110 Communicator at CeBIT, called a second generation communicator.

-- First announcement of the Bluetooth wireless technology for personal area networks.

1999 IEEE presents the standard 802.11b for wireless LANs (WLAN) of 11 Mbit/s in the license-free ISM band at 2.4 GHz (12 cm wavelength, the resonance frequency of the water molecule, also used in microwave owens).

2000 America Online (AOL) merges with Time Warner; introduction of the Intel Pentium-4 processor.

-May, Swedish-based clothing e-business Boo.com bankrupt.

-in February, stock prices start to plunge for IT and e-business companies. the beginning of \"the dotcom death\".

2001 First uncompressed real-time gigabit HDTV transmission across a wide-area IP network takes place on Internet2.

-Dutch SURFnet and Internet2's Abilene connect via gigabit ethernet (15 Nov)

-July, new models of the Intel Pentium 4 processor operate at 1600 and 1800 MHz. (cf November 20, 2000)

2002 Abilene (Internet2) backbone deploys native IPv6 (5 Aug)

Internet2 now has 200 university, 60 corporate, and 40 affiliate members. 2003 The first official Swiss online election takes place in Anières.

Looking back is so easy. Looking ahead is not:

1878年 \"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.\" -- Western Union internal memo, 19 “Everything that can be invented has already been invented.”, Charles H. Duell, director of the U.S. Patent Office;

1938 TV (电影制片人达莱尔·扎努克预言：“电视不会长久的。人们将很快就对盯着这个木盒子感到厌倦。”

1943 \"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.\chairman of IBM.

1957 \"I have travelled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year.\" The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall.

1968 \"But what ... is it good for?\" Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM commenting on the microchip.

1959 施乐拿着刚研制出来的复印机向IBM公司寻求合作时，IBM拒绝, 称：“世界对复印机的潜在市场最多不超过5000台。”

1977 \"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.\" Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp..

1980 \"DOS addresses only 1 Megabyte of RAM because we cannot imagine any applications needing more.\" Microsoft on the development of DOS. 1981 \"0k ought to be enough for anybody.\

1992 \"Windows NT addresses 2 Gigabytes of RAM which is more than any application will ever need\". Microsoft on the development of Windows NT

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Appendix 1. Vector operations：Vector calculus studies various differential

operators defined on scalar or vector fields, which are typically expressed in terms of the del operator (). The four most important operations in vector calculus are:

Operation Notation Description Domain/Range Gradient Measures the rate and direction of Maps scalar fields change in a scalar field. to vector fields. Curl Measures the tendency to rotate about a Maps vector fields point in a vector field. to vector fields. Divergence Measures the magnitude of a source or Maps vector fields sink at a given point in a vector field. to scalar fields. Laplacian A composition of the divergence and Maps scalar fields gradient operations. to scalar fields. Appendix 2. 冯·诺依曼

John von Neumann (Hungarian: margittai Neumann János Lajos) (December 28,

1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian American[1] mathematician who made major contributions to a vast range of fields,[2] including set theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, continuous geometry, economics and game theory, computer science, numerical analysis, hydrodynamics (of explosions), and statistics, as well as many other mathematical fields. He is generally regarded as one of the foremost mathematicians of the 20th century.[1] The mathematician Jean Dieudonné called von Neumann \"the last of the great mathematicians.\"[3] Most notably, von Neumann was a pioneer of the application of operator theory to quantum mechanics, a principal member of the Manhattan Project and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (as one of the few originally appointed), and a key figure in the development of game theory[4][2] and the concepts of cellular automata[2] and the universal constructor. Along with Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam, von Neumann worked out key steps in the nuclear physics involved in thermonuclear reactions and the hydrogen bomb.

Von Neumann's hydrogen bomb work was also played out in the realm of computing, where he and Stanislaw Ulam developed simulations on von Neumann's

digital computers for the hydrodynamic computations. During this time he contributed to the development of the Monte Carlo method, which allowed complicated problems to be approximated using random numbers. Because using lists of \"truly\" random numbers was extremely slow for the ENIAC, von Neumann developed a form of making pseudorandom numbers, using the middle-square method. Though this method has been criticized as crude, von Neumann was aware of this: he justified it as being faster than any other method at his disposal, and also noted that when it went awry it did so obviously, unlike methods which could be subtly incorrect.

While consulting for the Moore School of Electrical Engineering on the EDVAC project, von Neumann wrote an incomplete set of notes titled the First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC. The paper, which was widely distributed, described a computer architecture in which data and program memory are mapped into the same address space. This architecture became the de facto standard and can be contrasted with a so-called Harvard architecture, which has separate program and data memories on a separate bus. Although the single-memory architecture became commonly known by the name von Neumann architecture as a result of von Neumann's paper, the architecture's conception was based on the work of others, including J. Presper Eckert and John William Mauchly, inventors of the ENIAC at the University of Pennsylvania.[13] With very few exceptions, all present-day home computers, microcomputers, minicomputers and mainframe computers use this single-memory computer architecture.

Von Neumann also created the field of cellular automata without the aid of computers, constructing the first self-replicating automata with pencil and graph paper. The concept of a universal constructor was fleshed out in his posthumous work Theory of Self Reproducing Automata.[14] Von Neumann proved that the most effective way of performing large-scale mining operations such as mining an entire moon or asteroid belt would be by using self-replicating machines, taking advantage of their exponential growth.

He is credited with at least one contribution to the study of algorithms. Donald Knuth cites von Neumann as the inventor, in 1945, of the merge sort algorithm, in which the first and second halves of an array are each sorted recursively and then merged together.[15] His algorithm for simulating a fair coin with a biased coin[16] is used in the \"software whitening\" stage of some hardware random number generators. He also engaged in exploration of problems in numerical hydrodynamics. With R. D. Richtmyer he developed an algorithm defining artificial viscosity that improved the understanding of shock waves. It is possible that we would not understand much of astrophysics, and might not have highly developed jet and rocket engines without that work. The problem was that when computers solve hydrodynamic or aerodynamic problems, they try to put too many computational grid points at regions of sharp discontinuity (shock waves). The artificial viscosity was a mathematical trick to slightly smooth the shock transition without sacrificing basic physics.

美国科学家冯·诺依曼历来被誉为“电子计算机之父”。可是，数学

史界却同样坚持认为，冯·诺依曼是本世纪最伟大的数学家之一，他在遍历理论、拓扑群理论等方面做出了开创性的工作，算子代数甚至被命名为“冯·诺依曼代数”。物理学家说，冯·诺依曼在30年代撰写的《量子力学的数学基础》已经被证明对原子物理学的发展有极其重要的价值；而经济学家则反复强调，冯·诺依曼建立的经济增长横型体系，特别是40年代出版的著作《博弈论和经济行为》，使他在经济学和决策科学领域竖起了一块丰碑。

无论史学家怎样评价，美籍匈牙利裔学者约翰·冯·诺依曼（John Von Neumann，1903-1957）都不愧为杰出的全才科学大师。人们至今还在津津乐道，这位天才人物少年时代，竟请不到一位家庭教师„„

事情发生在1931年匈牙利首都布达佩斯。一位犹太银行家在报纸上刊登启事，要为他11岁的孩子招聘家庭教师，聘金超过常规10倍。布达佩斯人才济济，可一个多月过去，居然没有一人前往应聘。因为这个城市里，谁都听说过，银行家的长子冯·诺依曼聪慧过人，3岁就能背诵父亲帐本上的所有数字，6岁能够心算8位数除8位数的复杂算术题，8岁学会了微积分，其非凡的学习能力，使那些曾经教过他的教师惊诧不已。

父亲无可奈何，只好把冯·诺依曼送进一所正规学校就读。不到一个学期，他班上的数学老师走进家门，告诉银行家自己的数学水平已远不能满足冯·诺依曼的需要。“假如不给创造这孩子深造的机会，将会耽误他的前途，”老师认真地说道，“我可以将他推荐给一位数学教授，您看如何？”

银行家一听大喜过望，于是冯·诺依曼一面在学校跟班读书，一面由布达佩斯大学教授为他“开小灶”。然而，这种状况也没能维持几年，勤奋好学的

中学生很快又超过了大学教授，他居然把学习的触角伸进了当时最新数学分支——集合论和泛函分析，同时还阅读了大量历史和文学方面的书籍，并且学会了七种外语。毕业前夕，冯·诺依曼与数学教授联名发表了他第一篇数学论文，那一年，他还不到17岁。

考大学前夕，匈牙利政局出现动荡，冯·诺依曼便浪迹欧洲各地，在柏林和瑞士一些著名的大学听课。22岁时，他获瑞士苏黎士联邦工业大学化学工程师文凭。一年之后，轻而易举摘取布达佩斯大学数学博士学位。在柏林当了几年无薪讲师后，他转而攻向物理学，为量子力学研究数学模型，又使自己在理论物理学领域占据了突出的地位。风华正茂的冯·诺依曼，靠着顽强的学习毅力，在科学殿堂里“横扫千军如卷席”，成为横跨“数、理、化”各门学科的超级全才。

“机遇只偏爱有准备的头脑”。1928年，美国数学泰斗、普林斯顿高级研究院维伯伦教授（O.Veblen）广罗天下之英才，一封烫金的大红聘书，寄给了柏林大学这位无薪讲师，请他去美国讲授“量子力学理论课”。冯·诺依曼预料到未来科学的发展中心即将西移，欣然同意赴美国任教。1930年，27岁的冯·诺依曼被提升为教授；1933年，他又与爱因斯坦一起，被聘为普林斯顿高等研究院第一批终身教授，而且是6名大师中最年轻的一名。

在冯·诺依曼的一些同事眼里，他简直就不象是我们这个地球上的人。他们评价说：“你看，琼尼的确不是凡人，但在同人们长期共同生活之后，他也学会了怎样出色地去模仿世人。”冯·诺依曼的思维极快，几乎在别人才说出头几句话时，就立即了解到对方最后的观点。天才出自于勤

奋，他差不多天都工作到黎明才入睡，也常常因刻苦钻研而神魂颠倒，闹出些小笑话来。

据说有一天，冯·诺依曼心神不定地被同事拉上了牌桌。一边打牌，一边还在想他的课题，狼狈不堪地“输掉”了10元钱。这位同事也是数学家，突然心生一计，想要捉弄一下他的朋友，于是用赢得的5元钱，购买了一本冯·诺依曼撰写的《博奕论和经济行为》，并把剩下的5元贴在书的封面，以表明他“战胜”了“经济理论家”，着实使冯·诺依曼“好没面子”。

冯·诺依曼对科学做出的最大贡献当然是在计算机领域。

1944年仲夏的一个傍晚，戈德斯坦来到阿贝丁车站，等候去费城的火车，突然看见前面不远处，有个熟悉的身影向他走过来。来者正是闻名世界的大数学家冯·诺依曼。天赐良机，戈德斯坦感到绝不能放过这次偶然的邂逅，他把早已埋藏在心中的几个数学难题，一古脑儿倒出来，向数学大师讨教。数学家和蔼可亲，没有一点架子，耐心地为戈德斯坦排忧解难。听着听着，冯·诺依曼不觉流露出吃惊的神色，敏锐地从数学问题里，感到眼前这位青年身边正发生着什么不寻常的事情。他开始反过来向戈德斯坦发问，直问得年轻人“好像又经历了一次博士论文答辩”。最后，戈德斯坦毫不隐瞒地告诉他莫尔学院的电子计算机课题和目前的研究进展。

冯·诺依曼真的被震惊了，随即又感到极其兴奋。从1940年起，他就是阿贝丁试炮场的顾问，同样的计算问题也曾使数学大师焦虑万分。他急不可耐地向戈德斯坦表示，希望亲自到莫尔学院看一看那台尚未出世的机器。多年后，戈德斯坦回忆说：“当琼尼看到我们正在进行的一件工作时，他就双脚跳到电子计算机旁”。

莫契利和埃克特高兴地等待着冯·诺依曼的来访，他们也迫切希望得到这位著名学者的指导，同时又有点儿怀疑。埃克特私下对莫契利说道：“你只要听听他提的第一个问题，就能判断出冯·诺依曼是不是真正的天才”。

骄阳似火的８月，冯·诺依曼风尘仆仆地赶到了莫尔学院的试验基地，马不停蹄约见攻关小组成员。莫契利想起了埃克特的话，竖着耳朵聆听数学大师的第一个问题。当他听到冯·诺依曼首先问及的是机器的逻辑结构时，不由得对埃克特心照不宣地一笑，两人同时都被这位大科学家的睿智所折服！从此，冯·诺依曼成为莫尔学院电子计算机攻关小组的实际顾问，与小组成员频繁地交换意见。年轻人机敏地提出各种设想，冯·诺依曼则运用他渊博的学识把讨论引向深入，逐步形成电子计算机的系统设计思想。冯·诺依曼以其厚实的科技功底、极强的综合能力与青年们结合，极大提高了莫尔小组的整体水平，使莫尔小组成为“人才放大器”，至今依然是科学界敬慕的科研组织典范。

人们后来把“电子计算机之父”的桂冠戴在冯·诺依曼头上，而不是第一台电脑的两位实际研制者，这并不是没有根据的。莫契利和埃克特研制的ENIAC计算机获得巨大的成功，但它最致命的缺点是程序与计算两分离。指挥近2万电子管“开关”工作的程序指令，被存放在机器的外部电路里。需要计算某个题目前，埃克特必须派人把数百条线路用手接通，像电话接线员那样工作几小时甚至好几天，才能进行几分钟运算。

在ENIAC尚未投入运行前，冯·诺依曼就已开始准备对这台电子计算机进行脱胎换的改造。在短短10个月里，冯·诺依曼迅速把概念变成了方案。新机器方案命名为“离散变量自动电子计算机”，英文缩写EDVAC。1945年6月，冯·诺依曼与戈德斯坦等人，联名发表了一篇长达101页纸洋洋万言的报告，即计算机史上著名的“101页报告”。这份报告奠定了现代电脑体系结构坚实的根基，直到今天，仍然被认为是现代电脑科学发

展里程碑式的文献。

在EDVAC报告中，冯·诺依曼明确规定出计算机的五大部件：运算器CA、逻辑控制器CC、存储器M、输入装置I和输出装置O，并描述了五大部件的功能和相互关系。与ENIAC相比，EDVAC的改进首先在于冯·诺依曼巧妙地想出“存储程序”的办法，程序也被他当作数据存进了机器内部，以便电脑能自动一条接着一条地依次执行指令，再也不必去接通什么线路。其次，他明确提出这种机器必须采用二进制数制，以充分发挥电子器件的工作特点，使结构紧凑且更通用化。人们后来把按这一方案思想设计的机器统称为“诺依曼机”。

自冯·诺依曼设计的EDVAC计算机始，直到今天我们用“奔腾”芯片制作的多媒体计算机为止，电脑一代又一代的“传人”，大大小小千千万万台计算机，都没能够跳出“诺依曼机”的掌心。冯·诺依曼为现代计算机的发展指明了方向，从这个意义上讲，他是当之无愧的“电子计算机之父”。当然，随着人工智能和神经网络计算机的发展，“诺依曼机”一统天下的格局已经被打破，但冯·诺依曼对于发展电脑做出的巨大功绩，永远也不会因此而泯灭其光辉！

第二次世界大战结束后，由于种种原因，ENIAC研制小组发生令人痛惜的，“内存程序”的机器无法被立即研制。冯·诺依曼、戈德斯坦和勃克斯三人返回了新泽西州普林斯顿大学。1946年，他们为普林斯顿高级研究院先期研制出新的IAS计算机（IAS即高级研究院英文缩写）。

冯·诺依曼的归来，在普林斯顿掀起了一股强劲的电脑热。一向冷冷清清的研究院沸腾了，大批专业人才仰慕他的大名，纷至沓来，使普林斯顿高级研究院一时间成为美国电子计算机的研究中心。冯·诺依曼乘热打铁，着手将他那101页计算机方案付诸实施。1951年，这台凝聚着他多年心血的EDSAC计算机终于面世，程序储存在机器内部后，效率比ENIAC提高数百倍，只用了3563个电子管和1

万只晶体二极管，以1024个水银延迟线来储存程序和数据，消耗电力和占地面积亦只有ENIAC的三分之一。

在冯·诺依曼研制ISA电脑的期间，美国涌现了一批按照普林斯顿大学提供的ISA照片结构复制的计算机。例如，洛斯阿拉莫斯国家实验室研制的MANIAC，伊利诺斯大学制造的ILLAC。雷明顿·兰德公司科学家沃尔（W.Ware）甚至不顾冯·诺依曼的反对，把他研制的机器命名为JOHNIAC（“约翰尼克”，“约翰”即冯·诺依曼的名字）。冯·诺依曼的大名已经成为现代电脑的代名词。

在普林斯顿，冯·诺依曼还利用计算机去解决各个科学领域中的问题。他提出了一项用计算机预报天气的研究计划，构成了今天系统的气象数值预报的基础；他受聘担任IBM公司的科学顾问，帮助该公司催生出第一台存储程序的电脑IBM701；他对电脑与人脑的相似性怀着浓厚的兴趣，准备从计算机的角度研究人类的思维；他虽然没有参加达特默斯首次人工智能

会议，但他开创了人工智能研究领域的数学学派；他甚至是提出计算机程序可以复制的第一人，在半个世纪前就预言了电脑病毒的出现„„

1957年2月8日，冯·诺依曼身患骨癌，甚至没来得及写完那篇关于用电脑模拟人类语言的讲稿，就在美国德里医院与世长辞，只生活了54个春秋。他一生获得了数不清的奖项，包括两次获得美国总统奖，1994年还被追授予美国国家基础科学奖。他是电脑发展史上最有影响的一代伟人。

Appendix 3. 阿兰·图林——计算机与人工智能之父

Alan Mathison Turing, (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, logician and cryptographer.

Turing is often considered to be the father of modern computer science. He provided an influential formalisation of the concept of the algorithm and computation with the Turing machine. With the Turing test, meanwhile, he made a significant and characteristically provocative contribution to the debate regarding artificial intelligence: whether it will ever be possible to say that a machine is conscious and can think. He later worked at the National Physical Laboratory, creating one of the first designs for a stored-program computer, the ACE, although it was never actually built in its full form. In 1948, he moved to the University of Manchester to work on the Manchester Mark I, then emerging as one of the world's earliest true computers. During the Second World War Turing worked at Bletchley Park, the UK's codebreaking centre, and was for a time head of Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. He devised a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers, including the method of the bombe, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine.

Turing was homosexual, living in an era when homosexuality was still both illegal and officially considered a mental illness. Subsequent to his being outed, he was criminally prosecuted, which essentially ended his career. He died not long after, under what some believe were ambiguous circumstances.

University and his work on computability

Turing's unwillingness to work as hard on his classical studies as on science and mathematics meant he failed to win a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, and went on to the college of his second choice, King's College, Cambridge. He was an undergraduate there from 1931 to 1934, graduating with a distinguished degree, and in 1935 was elected a fellow at King's on the strength of a dissertation on the central limit theorem.

In his momentous paper \"On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem\"[14] (submitted on 28 May 1936), Turing reformulated Kurt Gödel's 1931 results on the limits of proof and computation, replacing Gödel's universal arithmetic-based formal language with what are now called Turing machines, formal and simple devices. He proved that some such machine would be capable of performing any conceivable mathematical problem if it were representable as an algorithm, even if no actual Turing machine would be likely to have practical applications, being much slower than practically realisable alternatives.

Turing machines are to this day the central object of study in theory of computation. He went on to prove that there was no solution to the Entscheidungs problem by first showing that the halting problem for Turing machines is undecidable: it is not possible to decide, in general, algorithmically whether a given Turing machine will ever halt. While his proof was published subsequent to Alonzo Church's

equivalent proof in respect to his lambda calculus, Turing's work is considerably more accessible and intuitive. It was also novel in its notion of a 'Universal (Turing) Machine', the idea that such a machine could perform the tasks of any other machine. The paper also introduces the notion of definable numbers.

Most of 1937 and 1938 he spent at Princeton University, studying under Alonzo Church. In 1938 he obtained his Ph.D. from Princeton; his dissertation introduced the notion of relative computing where Turing machines are augmented with so-called oracles, allowing a study of problems that cannot be solved by a Turing machine. Back in Cambridge in 1939, he attended lectures by Ludwig Wittgenstein about the foundations of mathematics.[15] The two argued and disagreed, with Turing defending formalism and Wittgenstein arguing that mathematics does not discover any absolute truths but rather invents them.[16]

Cryptanalysis

Two cottages in the stable yard at Bletchley Park. Turing worked here from 1939 – 1940 until he moved to Hut 8

During the Second World War, Turing was a main participant in the efforts at Bletchley Park to break German ciphers. Building on cryptanalysis

work carried out in Poland by Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski from Cipher Bureau before the war, he contributed several insights into breaking both the Enigma machine and the Lorenz SZ 40/42 (a Teletype cipher attachment

codenamed \"Tunny\" by the British), and was, for a time, head of Hut 8, the section responsible for reading German naval signals.

Since September 1938, Turing had been working part-time for the Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS), the British code breaking organisation. He worked on the problem of the German Enigma machine, and collaborated with Dilly Knox, a senior GCCS codebreaker.[17] On 4 September 1939, the day after the UK declared war on Germany, Turing reported to Bletchley Park, the wartime station of GCCS.

The Turing-Welchman bombe

Replica of a bombe machine

Within weeks of arriving at Bletchley Park,[18] Turing had designed an electromechanical machine which could help break Enigma faster than bomba from 1932, the bombe, named after and building upon the original Polish-designed bomba. The bombe,

with an enhancement suggested by mathematician Gordon Welchman, became one of the primary tools, and the major automated one, used to attack Enigma-protected message traffic.

Professor Jack Good, cryptanalyst working at the time with Turing at Bletchley Park, later said: \"Turing's most important contribution, I think, was of part of the design of the bombe, the cryptanalytic machine. He had the idea that you could use, in effect, a theorem in logic which sounds to the untrained ear rather absurd; namely that from a contradiction, you can deduce everything.\"[19]

The bombe searched for possibly correct settings used for an Enigma message (i.e., rotor order, rotor settings, etc.), and used a suitable \"crib\": a fragment of probable plaintext. For each possible setting of the rotors (which had of the order of 1019 states, or 1022 for the U-boat Enigmas which eventually had four rotors, compared to the usual Enigma variant's three),[20] the bombe performed a chain of logical deductions based on the crib, implemented electrically. The bombe detected when a contradiction had occurred, and ruled out that setting, moving onto the next. Most of the possible settings would cause contradictions and be discarded, leaving only a few to be investigated in detail. Turing's bombe was first installed on 18 March 1940.[21] Over two hundred bombes were in operation by the end of the war.[22]

Hut 8 and Naval Enigma

In December 1940, Turing solved the naval Enigma indicator system, which was more mathematically complex than the indicator systems used by the other services. Turing also invented a Bayesian statistical technique termed \"Banburismus\" to assist in breaking Naval Enigma. Banburismus could rule out certain orders of the Enigma rotors, reducing time needed to test settings on the bombes.

In the spring of 1941, Turing proposed marriage to Hut 8 co-worker Joan Clarke, although the engagement was broken off by mutual agreement in the summer. In July 1942, Turing devised a technique termed Turingismus or Turingery for use against the Lorenz cipher used in the Germans' new Geheimschreiber machine (\"secret writer\") which was one of those codenamed \"Fish\". He also introduced the Fish team to Tommy Flowers who under the guidance of Max Newman, went on to build the Colossus computer, the world's first programmable digital electronic computer, which replaced simpler prior machines (including the \"Heath Robinson\") and whose superior speed allowed the brute-force decryption techniques to be applied usefully to the daily-changing cyphers.[23] A frequent misconception is that Turing was a key figure in the design of Colossus; this was not the case.[24]

Turing travelled to the United States in November 1942 and worked with U.S. Navy cryptanalysts on Naval Enigma and bombe construction in Washington, and assisted at Bell Labs with the development of secure speech devices. He returned to Bletchley Park in March 1943. During his absence, Hugh Alexander had officially assumed the position of head of Hut 8, although Alexander had been de facto head for some time — Turing having little interest in the day-to-day running of the section. Turing became a general consultant for cryptanalysis at Bletchley Park.

In the latter part of the war, while teaching himself electronics at the same time, and assisted by engineer Donald Bayley, Turing undertook the design of a portable

machine codenamed Delilah to allow secure voice communications. It was intended for different applications, lacking capability for use with long-distance radio transmissions, and in any case, Delilah was completed too late to be used during the war. Though Turing demonstrated it to officials by encrypting/decrypting a recording of a Winston Churchill speech, Delilah was not adopted for use.

In 1945, Turing was awarded the OBE for his wartime services, but his work remained secret for many years. A biography published by the Royal Society shortly after his death recorded:

\"Three remarkable papers written just before the war, on three diverse mathematical subjects, show the quality of the work that might have been produced if he had settled down to work on some big problem at that critical time. For his work at the Foreign Office he was awarded the OBE.\"[25] Early computers and the Turing Test

From 1945 to 1947 he was at the National Physical Laboratory, where he worked on the design of the ACE (Automatic Computing Engine). He presented a paper on 19 February 1946, which was the first detailed design of a stored-program computer.[26] Although ACE was a feasible design, the secrecy surrounding the wartime work at Bletchley Park led to delays in starting the project and he became disillusioned. In late 1947 he returned to Cambridge for a sabbatical year. While he was at Cambridge, the Pilot ACE was built in his absence. It executed its first program on 10 May 1950. In 1948 he was appointed Reader in the Mathematics Department at Manchester and in 1949 became deputy director of the computing laboratory at the University of Manchester, and worked on software for one of the earliest true computers — the Manchester Mark I. During this time he continued to do more abstract work, and in \"Computing machinery and intelligence\" (Mind, October 1950), Turing addressed the problem of artificial intelligence, and proposed an experiment now known as the Turing test, an attempt to define a standard for a machine to be called \"intelligent\". The idea was that a computer could be said to \"think\" if it could fool an interrogator into thinking that the conversation was with a human.

In 1948, Turing, working with his former undergraduate colleague, D.G. Champernowne, began writing a chess program for a computer that did not yet exist. In 1952, lacking a computer powerful enough to execute the program, Turing played a game in which he simulated the computer, taking about half an hour per move. The game was recorded;[27] the program lost to Turing's colleague Alick Glennie, although it is said that it won a game against Champernowne's wife.

[ The Turing Test:

The phrase ―The Turing Test‖ is most properly used to refer to a proposal made by Turing (1950) as a way of dealing with the question whether machines can think. According to Turing, the question whether machines can think is itself ―too meaningless‖ to deserve discussion (442). However, if we consider the more precise

-- and somehow related -- question whether a digital computer can do well in a certain kind of game that Turing describes (―The Imitation Game‖), then -- at least in Turing's eyes -- we do have a question that admits of precise discussion. Moreover, as we shall see, Turing himself thought that it would not be too long before we did have digital computers that could ―do well‖ in the Imitation Game.

The phrase ―The Turing Test‖ is sometimes used more generally to refer to some kinds of behavioural tests for the presence of mind, or thought, or intelligence in putatively minded entities. So, for example, it is sometimes suggested that The Turing Test is prefigured in Descartes' Discourse on the Method. (Copeland (2000:527) finds an anticipation of the test in the 1668 writings of the Cartesian de Cordemoy. Gunderson (19) provides an early instance of those who find that Turing's work is foreshadowed in the work of Descartes.) In the Discourse, Descartes says:

If there were machines which bore a resemblance to our bodies and imitated our actions as closely as possible for all practical purposes, we should still have two very certain means of recognizing that they were not real men. The first is that they could never use words, or put together signs, as we do in order to declare our thoughts to others. For we can certainly conceive of a machine so constructed that it utters words, and even utters words that correspond to bodily actions causing a change in its organs. … But it is not conceivable that such a machine should produce different arrangements of words so as to give an appropriately meaningful answer to whatever is said in its presence, as the dullest of men can do. Secondly, even though some machines might do some things as well as we do them, or perhaps even better, they would inevitably fail in others, which would reveal that they are acting not from understanding, but only from the disposition of their organs. For whereas reason is a universal instrument, which can be used in all kinds of situations, these organs need some particular action; hence it is for all practical purposes impossible for a machine to have enough different organs to make it act in all the contingencies of life in the way in which our reason makes us act. (Translation by Robert Stoothoff)

Although not everything about this passage is perfectly clear, it does seem that Descartes gives a negative answer to the question whether machines can think; and, moreover, it seems that his giving this negative answer is tied to his confidence that no mere machine could pass The Turing Test: no mere machine could talk and act in the way in which adult human beings do. Since Descartes explicitly says that there are ―two very certain means‖ by which we can rule out that something is a machine -- it is, according to Descartes, inconceivable that a mere machine could produce different arrangements of words so as to give an appropriately meaningful answer to whatever is said in its presence; and it is for all practical purposes impossible for a machine to have enough different organs to make it act in all the contingencies of life in the way in which our reason makes us act -- it seems that he must agree with the further claim that nothing that can produce different arrangements of words so as to give an appropriately meaningful answer to whatever is said in its presence can be a machine. Given the further assumption -- which one suspects that Descartes would have been prepared to grant -- that only things that think can produce different arrangements of

words so as to give an appropriately meaningful answer to whatever is said in their presence, it seems to follow that Descartes would have agreed that the Turing Test would be a good test of his confident assumption that there cannot be thinking machines. Given the knowledge that something is indeed a machine, evidence that that thing can produce different arrangements of words so as to give an appropriately meaningful answer to whatever is said in its presence is evidence that there can be thinking machines.

The phrase ―The Turing Test‖ is also sometimes used to refer to certain kinds of purely behavioural allegedly logically sufficient conditions for the presence of mind, or thought, or intelligence, in putatively minded entities. So, for example, Ned Block's ―Blockhead‖ thought experiment is often said to be a (putative) knockdown objection to The Turing Test. (Block (1981) contains a direct discussion of The Turing Test in this context.) Here, what a proponent of this view has in mind is the idea that it is logically possible for an entity to pass the kinds of tests that Descartes and (at least allegedly) Turing have in mind -- to use words (and, perhaps, to act) in just the kind of way that human beings do -- and yet to be entirely lacking in intelligence, not possessed of a mind, etc.

The subsequent discussion takes up the preceding ideas in the order in which they have been introduced. First, there is a discussion of Turing's paper (1950), and of the arguments contained therein. Second, there is a discussion of current assessments of various proposals that have been called ―The Turing Test‖ (whether or not there is much merit in the application of this label to the proposals in question). Third, there is a brief discussion of some recent writings on The Turing Test, including some discussion of the question whether The Turing Test sets an appropriate goal for research into artificial intelligence. Finally, there is a very short discussion of Searle's Chinese Room argument, and, in particular, of the bearing of this argument on The Turing Test.]

美国物理学家、曾在洛斯阿拉莫斯实验室担任过冯·诺依曼助手的弗兰克尔在一封信中这样写到：“许多人都推举冯·诺依曼为‘计算机之父’，然而我确信他本人从来不会促成这个错误。或许，他可以被恰当地称为助产士，但是他曾向我，并且我肯定他也曾向别人坚决强调：如果不考虑巴贝奇、阿达和其他人早先提出的有关概念，计算机的基本概念属于图林。按照我的看法，冯·诺依曼的基本作用是使世界认识了由图林引入的基本概念„„”正是冯·诺依曼

本人，亲手把“计算机之父”的桂冠转戴在这位英国科学家阿兰·图林（Alan M.Turing，1912-1954）头上。

1983年美国出版的一部为他作传的文学作品，书名就叫做《阿兰·图林——谜》。图林的故事，更像是一篇难以理喻的神话，他似乎属于上天派往下界的神祗，匆匆而来，又匆匆而去，为人间留下了智慧，留下了深邃的思想，后人必须为之思索几十年甚至几百年。

阿兰·图林的挚友、英国曼彻斯特大学纽曼教授（M.Newman）的夫人这样描写图林，她说：“阿兰轮廓奇特的脑袋很漂亮，黑褐色的头发，船首形的下巴，蓝得像明亮玻璃似的眼睛，看到他的人都会留下深刻的印象。他的穿着总显得别扭，不管是穿那件又脏又破的大衣，还是费心换上干净的白衬衣都是如此。他与人在一起

的时候总用随便的态度和长时间的沉默来保护自己，十分腼腆害羞，从不与别人的目光相遇。然而，一旦在友好交谈的信任气氛中，他那双眼睛里透出的坦率和理解力就好像含有使人不敢喘气的东西。那目光不仅远远超出了言语和行动，而且仿佛也超出了人间。”

了解阿兰·图林生平详情的人并不太多，他的母亲在儿子不幸去世后强忍着悲痛，写下零

星的传记材料，才使后人认识这位“怪才”的成长历程。图林1912年6月23日出生于英国伦敦，书香门第的家族里就有三位当选过英国皇家学会会员。

孩提时代的图林性格活泼好动。3岁那年，他进行了在科学实验方面的首次尝试——把玩具木头人的胳膊掰下来种植到花园里，想让它们长成更多的木头人。8岁时，图林尝试着写了一部科学著作，题名《关于一种显微镜》，这个小孩虽然连单词都拼错了许多，但写得还像那么回事。在书的开头和结尾，图林都用同一句话“首先你必须知道光是直的”前后呼应，但中间的内容很短很短，可谓短得破了科学著作的纪录。

图林很早就表现出科学的探究精神，他曾对母亲讲：“我似乎总想从最普通的东西中弄出些名堂。”就连与小伙伴打足球，他也只喜欢在场外当巡边员，因为这样能够有机会计算球飞出边界的角度。这孩子似乎有一种天才的直觉，能够一眼看出问题的答案。

有一年，中学考试刚结束，一位主管考试的急匆匆赶到图林就读的学校，请校长把几位老师叫到他的办公室。“你们看看这几份考卷，”郑重地讲，“所有的答案完全正确，可没有任何中间步骤。这个叫图林的学生是否真有这种非凡能力？”

老师们相互交换了意见，然后分头为这些试题补上中间过程，耗费了九牛二虎之力。一位熟悉阿兰的教师告诉校长：“这孩子是有些奇怪的思想。有天我出了个有关房间照明的数学难题，图林不假思索地一口气道出了正确答案。可是当我向他要计算公式时，他却说现在不知道，必须过几天才能证明。我故意等了他两天，看着他在稿纸上算啊算啊，果然把公式给推导出来了，可他居然就能在不知道公式时悟出答案。说句笑话，阿兰的头脑可以像袋鼠般地跳跃。”

图林，1931年考入了剑桥皇家学院。大学毕业后留校任教，不到一年功夫，他就发表了几篇很有份量的数学论文，被选为皇家学院的研究员，年仅22岁。为此，他的母校宣布放假半天以示庆贺，连当代数学泰斗罗素也来函邀请他讲学。

1937年，伦敦权威的数学杂志又收到图林一篇论文《论可计算数及其在判定问题中的应用》。这篇论文是阐明现代电脑原理的开山之作，被永远载入了计算机的发展史册，照耀着现代电脑的前进方向。后来，冯·诺依曼在他的《自动计算机的一般逻辑理论》一文中写道：“大约12年前，英国逻辑学家图林开始研究下列问题，他想给自动计算机的含义下一个一般性的定义。”在这篇文章中，冯·诺依曼阐述了图林在理论上的重大贡献。

熟悉科学史的人都知道，伟大的科学发明往往是在理论取得重大突破之后才能

够得以实现。巴贝奇和阿达终身奋斗，致力于发明一台通用计算机——分析机，但他们并没有从理论上证明它的可行性，凭借的只是自己的经验和热情。图林的这篇论文，涉及的议题并非是如何研制一台具体计算机，而是为了解决数学领域一个基础性问题。

还在剑桥读书时，图林天才的大脑就常常在思索数学函数的“可计算性”问题。数学上的一些函数，是不是只要给人以足够的时间演算，也都能够通过有限次机械步骤求得解答呢？这是一个必须在理论上做出解释的数学难题，传统数学家当然只会想到用公式去推导，证明它是否成立。

可是，具有“跳跃思维”头脑的图林不愿意墨守陈规，他独辟蹊径地想出了一台冥冥之中的机器，一台理想中的计算机。

图林想象的机器说起来很简单：该计算机使用一条无限长度的纸带，纸带被划分成许多方格，有的方格被画上斜线，代表“1”；有的没有画任何线条，代表“0”。该计算机有一个读写头部件，可以从带子上读出信息，也可以往空方格里写下信息。该计算机仅有的功能：把纸带向右移动一格，然后把“1”变成“0”，或者相反把“0”变成“1”。

这就是图林设计的“理想计算机”，后人把它称为“图林机”，实际上这是一种不考虑硬件状态的计算机逻辑结构。在他的论文中，图林还提出可以设计出另一种“万能图林机”，用来模拟其它任何一台“图林机”的工作。如果认为“图林机”是理想计算机，那么“万能图林机”就是通用计算机的原始模型。图林甚至还想到把程序和数据都储存在纸带上，从而比冯·诺依曼更早提出了“储存程序”的概念。

图林把证明数学题的推导过程，转变成为一台自动机器的运行过程后，不仅证明了这一数学难题，而且用“万能计算机”的设想，从理论上证明了制造出通用计算机的可能性。他的“万能计算机”就是现代通用计算机的一种模型，这种机器只要为它编好程序，就可以承担其他机器能做的任何工作。后来研制出来的通用计算机，无论是5年之后楚泽研制的Z-3、8年之后艾肯研制的MarkⅠ，还是10年之后莫契利等创造的第一台电脑ENIAC，莫不是图林在头脑里早就在构思的机器。

纽曼教授感慨地说过：“现在的人很难认识到，当时把纸带及在纸带上的穿孔模式这类话题引进数学基础的讨论是多么大胆的革新。”从“理想计算机”和“储存程序”开始、直到后来论证的“自动程序设计”和“系统仿真”等等，阿兰·图林以其独特的洞察力提出了大量有价值的理论思想，似乎都成为计算机发展史不断追逐的目标，不断地被以后的发展证明其正确性。

曾应征入伍，加入到战时英国情报中心“布雷契莱庄园”，从事破译德军密码的工作。在这个秘密基地里，他与战友们一起成功地制作了第一台密码破译机“罗宾逊”。这个“庄园”后来又研制出一种破译密码的专用电子管式计算机“巨人”，在盟军诺曼底登陆等战役中立下了丰功伟绩。据主持研制“巨人”机的纽曼教授和工程师弗劳尔斯回忆，

他们都得益于受到图林通用计算机研究的启示。

在布雷契莱庄园，图林留下好多逸闻趣事，人们至今还在津津乐道。据说，布雷契莱有一辆出了名的自行车，它是图林在庄园里代步的交通工具。这辆车子有点小毛病——链条经常脱落。别人或许马上把车送到车行修理好再骑，可图林偏不修，他仔细琢磨链条脱落的规律，发现每踏到X圈时链条才会脱落。于是，他用十分“愚笨”的办法对付着骑车，边骑边数踏过的圈数，一到X圈就停止不踏，让车自己滑行。不久他觉得数数太费事，便制造了一台计数器装在车轮上，真是“笨”到了家，被同事们传为笑料。这件小事实际上反映了图林善于观察并用理论解决问题的性格特点。

另一件笑话说的是战争初期，图林预感到英国可能会沦陷，为了不把个人存款留给德国占领军，他取出全部现金换成两个大银锭，分别埋在两处并作上标记。可是，当战争结束后，尽管他保留了一张“藏宝”的秘密图纸，仍然找不到埋藏银锭的地点。沮丧之余，图林自制了一台“探雷器”，像工兵那样钻进丛林，弄得满身泥土，还是一无所获。每当别人提起这件往事，图林总为自己的粗心大意而满面羞愧，不过，同事们谁都没往心里去。阿兰这种对个人琐事粗枝大叶的作风，可能就是后来酿成一场不该发生悲剧的根源。

1945年，脱下军装的图林，带着大英帝国授予的最高荣誉勋章，被录用为泰丁顿国家物理研究所的高级研究员。由于有了布雷契莱的实践，阿兰·图林提交了一份“自动计算机”的设计方案，领导一批优秀的电子工程师，着手制造一种名叫ACE的新型电脑。1950年ACE电脑的样机公开表演，被认为是世界上最快最强有力的电子计算机之一。它大约用了800个电子管，成本约为4万英镑。图林在介绍ACE的存储装

置时说：“它能十分容易地把一本小说中的10页内容记住。”显然，ACE比EANIC的存储器容量更大。英国人似乎特别喜欢保密，图林写的那份50页ACE设计报告，直到1972年才以单行本的形式发表，保密时间长达27年之久。

1950年，图林来到曼彻斯特大学任教，并被指定为该大学自动计算机项目的负责人。就在这一年的10月，他的又一篇划时代论文发表。这篇文章引来的惊雷，今天还在震撼着电脑的世纪。在“第一代电脑”占统治地位的时代，这篇论文甚至可以作为“第五代电脑”和“第六代电脑”的宣言书。从此，人们更愿意把阿兰·图林称作“人工智能之父”。这篇论文题名为《计算机与智能》，后来被重新汇编入书时更名《机器能思维吗？》。在这篇人工智能的“宣言书”里，图林首次从行为主义的角度给出了人工智能的定义。在对该论文作补充说明的另一篇文章中，图林进一步写道：“‘你无法制造一台替你思考的机器’，这是人们一般会毫无疑义接受下来的老生长谈。„„我的论点是：与人脑的活动方式极为相似的机器是可以制造出来的。这些机器有时会出现错误，但有时它们也会提出非常新颖的语句，而且总的来说，它们输出的东西将与人脑输出的东西同样值得注意。”

更有趣的是，图林设计了一个著名的“图林试验”，试图让机器模仿人来回答某些问题，通过实验和观察来判断机器是否具备智能。他设想了一种“问”与“答”的模式：观察者通过控制打字机向两个试验对象通话，其中一个是人，另一个是机器。观察者和试验者之间相互隔离，不能看见对方。“图林试验”要求观察者不断提出各种问题，根据回答来辨别哪一个是人，哪一个是机器。图林曾预言，随着电脑科学和机器智能的发展，本世纪末将会出现这样的机器。在这点上，图林可能过于乐观。但是，“图林试验”大胆地提出“机器思维”的概念，为人工智能确定了奋斗的目标，并指明了前进的方向。

1951年春天，英国皇家学会把会员的称号授给阿兰，这是图林家族的第四位会员。连以前不赞成他的学术观点的人都写来热情洋溢的贺信。1954年，阿兰就要跨进他人生的第42个年头。6月8日清晨，阿兰的女管家像往常一样走进他的卧室，台灯还亮着，书桌上放着一封准备寄出的信，在这封信里，阿兰写到他同意接受几天后的一次访问邀请。床头柜上有个苹果，只吃了一小半。阿兰安祥地沉睡在床上，再也没有醒来„„

阿兰吃剩的那只苹果里，法医检验出剧毒的残液。事实上，图林在个人私生活方面也并非完美无缺，1952年曾因同性恋被警方拘留。他采用注射激素方法试图治疗这种倾向。他的母亲绝不相信所谓“图林服毒自杀”的传闻，认为图林可能死于无法解释的意外事故。

图林的死无疑是电脑科学界的巨大损失。目前，计算机界仍有个一年一度“图林奖”，由美国计算机学会（ACM）颁发给世界上最优秀的电脑科学家，它就像科学界的诺贝尔奖那样，是电脑领域的最高荣誉。