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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.'"

4 of 123 comments (clear)

  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. 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 :-)

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

    --
    "Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...