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Friday, December 04, 2015


Just Finished Reading: Turing’s Cathedral – The Origins of the Digital Universe by George Dyson (FP: 2012)

No doubt Sarah Conner would find it more than a little ironic that the origins and development of computers and nuclear weapons are so intertwined. Indeed it is more than likely that without early electronic computers nuclear weapons would have had no outcome on WW2 and probably would not have appeared until the 1950’s if at all. The existing computers of the day – human beings using mechanical calculators – where simply incapable of producing the required artillery range tables in good time, never mind calculating effective anti-aircraft gunfire or multiple shockwaves within an atomic bombs critical mass. For that you really needed something much, much faster.

Luckily (for many reasons) the groundwork had already been laid by Alan Turing who postulated the existence of a Universal Machine capable of being programmed (and reprogrammed) to do any conceivable calculation. With this theory already in the public domain it was only a matter of time before a group of mathematicians and engineers would attempt to make theory into reality – driven by the fear that the Germans (and later the Russians) would get the bomb first or figure out how to make bigger bombs and ways to get them to their targets. At the head of this group was the polymath John Von Neuman based at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Driven by his singular intellect and surrounded by some of the best and brightest minds in existence – ironically many who had fled the German advances in Europe as well as those who had been ‘encouraged’ to leave occupied territory – they literally created the world we take for granted from the ground up and from first principles. Nothing like this had ever been tried before and no one really knew what could and could not be done. That, of course, was half the fun to those involved. They lived, worked and played on the cutting edge of technology with hard deadlines and, to begin with at least, unlimited amounts of money (from the US Military). It was an exciting time for everyone and most of them realised that they were involved in ground-breaking epoch making things.

Told with an insider’s knowledge and awareness (his father was involved in the programme in the 1950’s) this was often a fascinating insight into the birth of the electronic age. Focusing mostly on Von Neuman as the hub of all of this activity and of the nuclear weapons programme it was designed to facilitate the author throws a great deal of illumination on what was, at the time, often a highly secret activity. We learn a great deal about the people involved, the internal politics of the group(s), the fight to gain recognition in the academic world where engineers in particular were regarded as little better than tinkerers who might possibly fix your equipment but couldn’t possibly produce anything new of value. We also learn about the pet projects some of the mathematicians dabbled in in-between the war or later military work – weather prediction and control, Artificial Intelligence, the stock market, Game Theory and the first hints of a computer network that would, generations later, become known as the Internet.

A little hard going at times (when it drifted into too technical talk about early computer components and mathematical theory) this was generally a fascinating look at the origins of the modern world which made me appreciate just how revolutionary and transformative the process was. The invention of electronic computers – even ones as crude as these back in the 1940’s and 50’s – was an absolute game changer. The world can I think be divided into a pre and post computer age with too great a sense of hyperbole. It really was that important and this book helps to explain exactly why. Recommended.    

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