Related papers: How Charles Babbage invented the Computer
This essay gives a short, informal account of the development of digital logic from the Pleistocene to the Manhattan Project, the introduction of reversible circuits, and Richard Feynman's allied proposal for quantum computing. We argue…
Computational Logic is the use of computers to establish facts in a logical formalism. Originating in 19th-century attempts to understand the nature of mathematical reasoning, the subject now comprises a wide variety of formalisms,…
If Turing's groundbreaking paper in 1936 laid the foundation of the theory of computation (ToC), it is no exaggeration to say that Cook's paper in 1971, "The complexity of theorem proving procedures", [4] has pioneered the study of…
Quantum phase transitions materialize as level crossings in the ground-state energy when the parameters of the Hamiltonian are varied. The resulting ground-state phase diagrams are straightforward to determine by exact diagonalization on…
Tangle machines are a topologically inspired diagrammatic formalism to describe information flow in networks. This paper begins with an expository account of tangle machines motivated by the problem of describing `covariance intersection'…
The Bayesian statistical paradigm uses the language of probability to express uncertainty about the phenomena that generate observed data. Probability distributions thus characterize Bayesian analysis, with the rules of probability used to…
Constructing complex computation from simpler building blocks is a defining problem of computer science. In algebraic automata theory, we represent computing devices as semigroups. Accordingly, we use mathematical tools like products and…
In this short essay, we show how computer experiments, and especially visualization, allowed for the investigation and discovery of phenomena which would have passed unnoticed. We shall also highlight the importance of interactivity between…
A major challenge in quantum computing is to solve general problems with limited physical hardware. Here, we implement digitized adiabatic quantum computing, combining the generality of the adiabatic algorithm with the universality of the…
This memorial paper tells the story of the beginning of Boris (Boaz) Trakhtenbrot's long and rich life path, full of unusual and sometimes tragic events. This path led a boy from a Jewish settlement in Eastern Europe to be recognized as one…
The association of information with entropy has been argued on plausibility arguments involving the operation of imaginary engines and beings, and it is not a universal theorem. In this paper, a theorem by Charles Bennett on reversible…
As the scale of quantum programs grows to match that of classical software, the nascent field of quantum software engineering must mature and tools such as debuggers will become increasingly important. However, developing a quantum debugger…
Computational power can be measured by assigning an algebraic structure to a computational device. Here, we convert a small patch of Conway's Game of Life into a transformation semigroup. The conversion captures not only time evolution but…
This essay aims to bid analogue historians assume that digitisation is the first step to creating historical heritage based on the new language of Science: Computer Science. As we know, Humanities disciplines cannot easily be encapsulated…
The original motivation to build a quantum computer came from Feynman who envisaged a machine capable of simulating generic quantum mechanical systems, a task that is believed to be intractable for classical computers. Such a machine would…
This is a typeset version of Alan Turing's Second World War research paper \textit{The Applications of Probability to Cryptography}. A companion paper \textit{Paper on Statistics of Repetitions} is also available in typeset form from arXiv…
Computer model of a "sense of humour" suggested previously [arXiv:0711.2058, 0711.2061, 0711.2270] is raised to the level of a realistic algorithm.
The call for efficient computer architectures has introduced a variety of application-specific compute engines to the heterogeneous computing landscape. One particular engine, the analog mesh computer, has been well received due to its…
The agenda of quantum algorithmic information theory, ordered `top-down,' is the quantum halting amplitude, followed by the quantum algorithmic information content, which in turn requires the theory of quantum computation. The fundamental…
Mechanized reasoning uses computers to verify proofs and to help discover new theorems. Computer scientists have applied mechanized reasoning to economic problems but -- to date -- this work has not yet been properly presented in economics…