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Home-Built Turing Machine

Posted by Soulskill on from the i'll-order-a-dozen dept.

stronghawk writes "The creator of the Nickel-O-Matic is back at it and has now built a Turing Machine from a Parallax Propeller chip-based controller, motors, a dry-erase marker and a non-infinite supply of shiny 35mm leader film. From his FAQ: 'While thinking about Turing machines I found that no one had ever actually built one, at least not one that looked like Turing's original concept (if someone does know of one, please let me know). There have been a few other physical Turing machines like the Logo of Doom, but none were immediately recognizable as Turing machines. As I am always looking for a new challenge, I set out to build what you see here.'"

10 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. Cool...I think. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I admire people who build things like this, but at the same time I also wonder just why the heck they do it.

    I guess that's the difference between people, I'd rather build something new than re-create something that's been done before. (Honestly not trying to sound like an ass, just find it interesting.)

    1. Re:Cool...I think. by 91degrees · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't think it has been done before though. At least not as a hardware implementation. The reason being that while it's an interesting hypohetical machine, it's extremely inefficient means of computing anything. But it is very nice to actually see a visualisation of such a machine

  2. hmmm by Denihil · · Score: 3, Insightful

    maybe i'm missing something but i'm used to people talking about "turing machines" as a machine that is "turing-complete", not looking like a hypothetical turing machine he described in his paper. Is this aesthetics over the principle he meant it to be taken by? Cool hardhack though btw, love to have one of those on my coffee table.

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    WÌÌfÍ--ÍSÌÒÍ...Í...ÌHÌÍfÍÍÍ--ÍÍÍ
  3. Technically... by Corporate+Troll · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Purely technically, a Turing Machine that hasn't infinite tapes is simply a Finite State Machine. You cannot build a "real" Turing Machine. Doesn't make his creation less interesting though :-)

  4. Re: I found that no one had ever actually built on by Corporate+Troll · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And you'd be wrong.... Computers are Finite State Machines with an insane number of states.

  5. All in the head? by s-gen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A turing machine isn't just the head and the tape, its those things plus a state transition table. The microcontroller is doing the state transition table part.

  6. Re: I found that no one had ever actually built on by hoggoth · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Incorrect. The keyboard, mouse, and audio input insure it is indeed a Turing machine with infinite input.

    --
    - For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat /dev/random (may take some time)
  7. bad moderation by Khashishi · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It looks like some berserk moderators got in here. Why all the troll mods?

  8. Setting aside the Turing stuff... by HotNeedleOfInquiry · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The hardware is very elegant and well-done. The guy is a multi-talented geek of the highest order.

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    "Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
  9. Re:Isn't this actually using three states? by quadelirus · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I believe the 1, 0 and blank are the characters of the TM's alphabet, not the states. The states are internal to the machine and there can be quite a lot of them depending on what the program is to accept the TM's language.