Turing's Cathedral

byGeorge Dyson

The Origins of the Digital Universe

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How did computers take over the world? In late 1945, a small group of brilliant engineers and mathematicians gathered at the newly created Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Their ostensible goal was to build a computer which would be instrumental in the US government's race to create a hydrogen bomb. The mathematicians themselves, however, saw their project as the realization of Alan Turing's theoretical 'universal machine.'

In Turing's Cathedral, George Dyson vividly re-creates the intense experimentation, incredible mathematical insight and pure creative genius that led to the dawn of the digital universe, uncovering a wealth of new material to bring a human story of extraordinary men and women and their ideas to life. From the lowliest iPhone app to Google's sprawling metazoan codes, we now live in a world of self-replicating numbers and self-reproducing machines whose origins go back to a 5-kilobyte matrix that still holds clues as to what may lie ahead.

Fascinating . . . the story Dyson tells is intensely human, a tale of teamwork over many years and all the harmonies and rows that involves

Jenny Uglow

About George Dyson

George Dyson is a historian of technology and the author of several books including Turing's Cathedral, Project Orion and Darwin Among the Machines. His subjects range from the development (and redevelopment) of the Aleut kayak to the evolution of artificial intelligence.
Details
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • ISBN: 9780718194505
  • Length: 432 pages
  • Price: £4.99
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