Computers: are they omnipotent?


(Credit: MIT Press)


Computers and problems

    Are there problems which cannot be solved by a computer?

What is a computer

    Large and small computers - they can all do the same things

Algorithms and executors

    What do recipes and adding two numbers together have in common?

Algorithms, programmes, calculators

    Calculators are executors of algorithms

What do CEP and Tiquit have in common?

    All calculators have the same solving capacity

How to tile a wichever room

    A problem which no calculator can solve

Unsolvable problems

    Other problems which no calculator can solve

Glossary


 

S. Martini                

Useful link

  About the Pisa Electronic Calculator
- Photographic archives of Pisa University (only in Italian)
- A document about its history (only in Italian)
  C-related problems: Wikipedia
  The Alan Turing home page
  The Turing Archive for the History of Computing

 

The Webweavers: Last modified Mon, 23 Jan 2006 14:09:35 GMT