Languages: Machines for Thinking
For many years, nearly all references about machines as a language for thinking have been specialized and limited. Colleges with scholars who write textbooks usually have not had a variety of expensive and versatile computing machinery. As a result, the main environment for stimulating possible authors has until recently been missing. The list of references is accordingly brief.
Aiken, Howard H., and others, Proceedings of a Symposium on Large-Scale Digital Calculating Machinery, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1948, 302 pp.
Comrie, John Leslie, The Application of Commercial Calculating Machines to Scientific Computing, Mathematical Tables and Other Aids to Computation, vol. 2, no. 16, Oct. 1946, pp. 149-159.
Crew, E. W., Calculating Machines, The Engineer, vol. 172, Dec. 1941, pp. 438-441.
Fry, Macon, Designing Computing Mechanisms, Cleveland, Ohio: Penton Publishing Co., 1946, 48 pp. (Reprinted from Machine Design, Aug. 1945 through Feb. 1946.)
Hartree, D. R., Calculating Machines: Recent and Prospective Developments and Their Impact on Mathematical Physics, Cambridge, England: The University Press, 1947, 40 pp.
Horsburgh, E. H., Modern Instruments and Methods of Calculation, London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1914, 343 pp.
Lilley, S., Mathematical Machines, Nature, vol. 149, Apr. 25, 1942, pp. 462-465.
Murray, Francis J., The Theory of Mathematical Machines, New York: King’s Crown Press, 1947, 116 pp.
The author states that a mathematical machine is a mechanism that provides information concerning the relationships among a specified set of mathematical concepts.
Turck, J. A. V., The Origin of Modern Calculating Machines, Chicago: Western Society of Engineers, 1921.
Recently, however, some magazine and newspaper publishers have seen news value in machines that think, and some good general articles with appeal to a wide audience have appeared. For the references to these articles, see the section of this supplement entitled “Digital Machines—Miscellaneous.”