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into another) in the interrelated, operational, setting of machines.
46
In modern
terminology: the programming languages ALGOL 60 and FORTRAN can be viewed
as equivalent computational tools to that of a universal Turing machine. From
this specific theoretical perspective, it does not matter which programming lan-
guage or which computer one prefers, they are all equivalent and (to a very large
extent) interchangeable.
By the end of the 1950s, two metaphorical seeds had thus been sown for future
advances in computer programming. The concepts of language and machine be-
came increasingly interchangeable. Dijkstra in the 1960s, for example, frequently
described a layer in his hierarchical designs as either a language or, equivalently,
as a machine.
47
The origins of Structured Programming are, in my opinion,
firmly rooted in the language metaphor and the onion-skin metaphor [34, Ch.1].
Viewing the universal Turing machine as a mathematical model of a general-
purpose computer — as Booth, Carr, Gill, and Gorn did in the second half of the
1950s — also meant that the ideal general-purpose computer was one of infinite
storage capacity. Nofre et al. appropriately use the words “conceptualization of
the computer as an infinitely protean machine” [85, my emphasis] (to describe
this transformational point of view) but they do this without mentioning the
pivotal role the universal Turing machine played in this regard.
48
Moreover,
many historical actors never joined Gorn et al. in viewing computers as infinitely
protean machines. Dijkstra, Parnas, and others frequently insisted throughout
their careers not to ignore the finiteness of real machinery, even when reasoning
abstractly about software.
49
It was some mathematicians — most notably Carr, Gorn, and Perlis — who
in the field of automatic programming tried to seek unifying principles and who
advocated making a science. In 1958, for example, Carr explained his desire for
“the creation of translators, techniques for using them, and, finally, a theory of
such formal translators. [. . .] The development of ‘automatic problem solutions’
requires formalism, interchangeability of procedures, and computability of lan-
guages if it is to become a true discipline in the scientific sense.” [27, p.2, my
emphasis].
50
Carr, Gorn, and Perlis played a large part in helping form and shape the ACM
during the 1950s and 1960s. Under the initiative of Oettinger, the ACM chose to
honor Turing in 1965. This was well before Turing’s secret war work in England
came into the open. In other words, Turing’s influence was already felt in auto-
matic programming, automata theory, and other research fields before popular
books were published about his allegedly significant role in the makings of the
first universal computers.
It was Babbage who — rightly or wrongly — was put front and center dur-
ing the 1950s as the father of the universal computer (cf. Alt [9, p.8]). During
the 1950s and 1960s, Turing was never portrayed as the father of the universal
computer. Since the 1970s, popular claims have been made, literally stating that
Turing is the “inventor of the computer” or “the inventor of the universal com-
puter” — see the romantic accounts of Copeland [32], Davis [36, 37], Dyson [48],
Leavitt [67, 68], and Robinson [99] for some typical examples; see Burks’s fitting
XVIII
rebuttals [23, 24] and van Rijsbergen’s and Vardi’s sober reflections on Turing’s
legacy [108, 110].
“What would Turing be doing today if he were still alive?” — a question
that was posed multiple times in celebration of Turing’s Centennial. He would
be countering the now-prevailing belief that he is “the inventor of the computer”!
Acknowledgments
I am particularly grateful to Thomas Haigh for his written and oral feedback
on multiple drafts of this article, starting in the spring of 2013. I also thank an
anonymous reviewer, the editors Liesbeth De Mol and Giuseppe Primiero, and
my mentor Gerard Alberts.
Endnotes
1
The minutes of that meeting state:
Bright reported that the Program Committee recommends that the National
ACM Lecture be named the Allen [sic] M. Turing Lecture.
Oettinger moved, seconded by Young that it be so named. Several council
members indicated they were not satisfied with this choice.
Juncosa suggested we consider a lecture name that is not that of a person.
van Wormer moved, seconded by Juncosa to table the motion.
The vote was: for-15; opposed-5; abstention-2. [4, p.11, original emphasis]
2
Carr was President of the National Council of the ACM in 1957–59, founding
editor of Computing Reviews in 1960–62, and member of the Committee for the
Turing Award during the second half of the 1960s. Gorn was committee member
on programming languages, a Council Member in 1958–68, and Chairman of
the Standards Committee in 1962–68. Oettinger was President of the ACM in
1966-68 [7, 26, 69, 84, 90].
3
The phrase “a large store containing both numbers and instructions” is
akin to the terminology used by Andrew & Kathleen Booth in 1956 [20]. The
primary sources listed in the bibliography suggest that the Booths, Carr, Gorn,
and several other actors did not use the words “stored program” during the first
half of the 1950s.
As Mark Priestley notes in his book, A Science of Operations [94], it was the
early machines (such as the ASCC and ENIAC) that were described as revolution-
ary: “It was several years until the first machines based on the stored-program
design became operational, and even longer until they were widely available” [94,
p.147].
4
The reader should bear in mind that although I have extensively studied
the “Saul Gorn Papers”, which also contain a lot of correspondence between
Gorn and Carr, the papers do not contain many primary sources of the 1940s
and early 1950s. Moreover, I have yet to travel to the Great Lakes in order
to study the “Alan J. Perlis Papers” at the Charles Babbage Institute, and
the “John W. Carr Papers” and “Arthur W. Burks Papers” at the Bentley
Historical Library. In future research I also aspire to cover the work of Maurice
Wilkes and Christopher Strachey. Complementary to all this, I have written a
chapter for a Dutch book De geest van de computer [46] in which I discuss the