On 2017-Sep-06, at 11:03 AM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: >> On Sep 6, 2017, at 1:25 PM, Fred Jan Kraan via cctalk >> <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: >> >> While reading a biography of Claude Shannon, I try to get a picture how >> computers were seen and used before Information Theory emerged. It might be >> something like this: >> >> Before Information Theory, computers were mainly calculators; processing >> programs from numbers put into the machine, much like programmable, but >> non-graphic calculators. Information Theory states that almost any digital >> encoded data can be processed, as long as you can teach the computer how to >> interpret the data. >> >> Any more insights on this? > > It seems to me that Turing's 1936 paper clearly takes the information theory > route. Whether Babbage did I'm not sure.
While there was theory around before the machines, the stored-program machines made it concrete. Once numbers and programs were stored in the same memory and hence represented the same way it "brought home" or made concrete, aspects of the theory. But that's not to suggest the theory was the driving force. I have wondered just how much influence the latent theory that was around influenced the practical implementors of calculating machinery in that era of the mid-1940s, the impression I have is not much, at least not in a recognisably causal or conscience manner. My impression is the implementors at the time arrived at stored-program machines far more out of practical necessity than trying to enact, or even being much aware of, the theory. Once those machines were implemented I think one of the first practical recognitions or uses of the data-vs-numbers, or symbols-vs-numbers, distinction would be assemblers. When/what/who was the actual first assembler conceived or produced? I think someone produced a graphical-display tic-tac-toe program for Whirlwind quite early, more a logic processing task than number-crunching. However even before the stored-program machines, the Colossus machines (WWII) were more logic/symbol processors than numerical. The SIGSALY digital voice encryption system (also WWII) was a mixture of digital numeric and logic processing for an objective that was not number-crunching. Shannon was consulted during the design of SIGSALY, IIRC from reading. But then also to keep in mind that Turing's work derives from Russell, et al reducing numbers and calculation to the more abstract notions of set theory, which - expressed in modern terms - was essentially declaring numbers and calculation to be a subset of 'information'. That whole era of Nyquist/Shannon looking at the nature of information, Turing looking at highly abstract theory of symbol manipulation, and the implementors of calculating machines, that all came together to produce the modern computing and informatics world can be fascinating.
