“Review of a Book by D. R. Hartree”, 1951 (; backlinks):
This book consists essentially of a short series of lectures delivered by the author at the University of Illinois in 1948.
…On page 61 a prediction is made that the decimal representation of numbers will probably oust the binary representation in general-purpose computers, partly because of the greater ease of “troubleshooting” when the decimal representation is used. This may well be true for computers in the strict sense, but in general-purpose machines intended for logic, for pure mathematics in general, for the theory of numbers in particular, and for the analysis of the nervous system, the binary representation is liable to remain more convenient (except perhaps for multi-valued logics). It cannot be predicted for any of these subjects that their mechanization will not ultimately become of great practical importance.
The author has an open mind on the “exciting” question of whether machines will be constructed which will “think for themselves”, ie. which will handle symbols in a non-predictable but useful manner. If this will be possible for future machines, then it is presumably also possible (though perhaps inconvenient) for machines designed before 1948, a fact which the author has apparently overlooked. It is a question of producing a suitable program. This question has received some attention from Turing and others. A randomizing device would be required, and could be supplied by placing random numbers in the store.
The author is clearly right in using the word “exciting”, since a machine which was so nearly human (or perhaps superhuman) could become a modern oracle. The threshold between a machine which was the intellectual inferior or superior of a man would probably be reached if the machine could do its own programming. Such speculations would be contrary to the matter-of-fact style of the book.
View PDF: