The Turing Guide

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506 | NOTES TO PAGES 239–250



  1. Turing explains loop control (by means of a B-tube) in Turing (Note 3), pp.  66–7; the B-tube was
    effectively a register containing n and this number was counted down by repeatedly subtracting 1.

  2. Turing (Note 3), p. 22.

  3. The Mark II was synchronized by an oscillator with a frequency of 100 kHz. Turing called a single
    cycle of the oscillator the ‘digit period’. The digit period was 10 microseconds and the duration of a
    beat was 24 digit periods.

  4. Williams and Kilburn (Note 5), p. 57.

  5. We follow the A = 440 Hz tuning standard.

  6. Dodd (Note 9), p. 32.

  7. H. Lukoff, From Dits to Bits: a Personal History of the Electronic Computer, Robotics Press (1979),
    pp. 85–6.

  8. Turing (Note 3), pp. 87–8.

  9. Williams and Kilburn (Note 5), p. 59.

  10. G. C. Tootill, ‘Digital computer notes on design & operation’, 1948–9, Manchester Archive; table of
    the machine’s instructions dated 27 October 1948.

  11. Turing (Note 3), pp. 24, 88.

  12. S. H. Lavington Early British Computers: the Story of Vintage Computers and the People Who Built
    Them, Manchester University Press (1980), p. 37.

  13. Prinz (Note 13), p. 20 (our italics).

  14. P. Doornbusch, The Music of CSIRAC: Australia’s First Computer Music, Common Ground (2005).
    The book includes a CD of re-created music.

  15. D. McCann and P. Thorne, The Last of the First. CSIRAC: Australia’s First Computer, Melbourne
    University Press (2000), p. 2.

  16. McCann and Thorne (Note 49), p. 3; Doornbusch (Note 48), pp. 24–5.

  17. J. Fildes,‘“Oldest” computer music unveiled’, BBC News, 17 June 2008 (http://www.news.bbc.co.uk/2/
    hi/technology/7458479.stm).

  18. R. T. Dean (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Computer Music, Oxford University Press (2009),
    pp. 558, 584.

  19. Lukoff (Note 41), p. 84.

  20. Lukoff (Note 41), p. 86.

  21. http://www.news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7458479.stm; and http://www.digital60.org/media/
    mark_one_digital_music. Part of this recording can be heard at http://www.abc.net.au/classic/
    content/2014/06/23/4028742.htm. This edition of Midday with Margaret Throsby (ABC Radio National,
    23 June 2014) is a musical tour through Turing’s life and work, on the 102nd anniversary of his birth.

  22. Cooper interview (Note 25).

  23. National Sound Archive, ref. H3942.

  24. Cooper interview (Note 25).

  25. BBC Recording Training Manual, British Broadcasting Corporation (1950), pp. 49, 52.

  26. BBC Recording Training Manual (Note 59), p. 26

  27. How this was done is described in our companion paper ‘Turing and the history of computer music’,
    in J. Floyd and A. Bokulich (eds) Philosophical Explorations of the Legacy of Alan Turing, Boston
    Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, Springer Verlag, 2017.

  28. D. Link, ‘Software archaeology: on the resurrection of programs for the Mark 1, 1948–58’ (2015)
    (https://vimeo.com/116346967).


CHAPTER 24 TURING, lOVElACE, AND BABBAGE (SwADE)



  1. B. V. Bowden (ed.), Faster Than Thought, Pitman (1953), p. ix.

  2. An earlier version of this thesis is presented in D. Swade, ‘Origins of digital computing: Alan Turing,
    Charles Babbage, and Ada Lovelace’, in H. Zenil (ed.), A Computable Universe: Understanding
    Computation and Exploring Nature as Computation, World Scientific (2012), 23–43.

  3. M. Moseley, Irascible Genius: a Life of Charles Babbage, Inventor, Hutchinson (1964).

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