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by KingOfCoders 1737 days ago
I can only repeat my comment from down:

"Likewise, Konrad Zuse never got a Turing award despite having created the world's first working programmable general computer 1935-41. [...] It was pointed out that none of the computers built during the 1940s were influenced in any way by Turing's 1936 theoretical paper, [...]"
2 comments
obastani 1737 days ago
As far as I know, Konrad Zuse didn't prove that this strategy was a universal model of computation. In contrast, Turing proved that his universal machine could emulate any other machine, given the right program.

In my view, Turing's contribution is providing a plausible definition of computation along with a deep and comprehensive theoretical characterization of the properties of this model of computation. This is why Turing machines form the basis of theoretical computer science, and not other models such as lambda calculus. I think saying that Turing machines were adopted since they were merely more convenient is highly misleading.

I think this pattern repeats a lot: There are many cases where you can point to multiple people who invented similar ideas around the same time, but it is typically the person who provided the most deep and comprehensive treatment of the subject that ultimately gets most of the credit. This depth is not conveyed in pop science attributions such as "Turing invented computation", but this doesn't mean Turing doesn't deserve the credit.

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mcguire 1737 days ago
I don't believe anyone has received a Turing award for creating a working computer.
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tialaramex 1737 days ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Wilkes

His Turing award citation: "Professor Wilkes is best known as the builder and designer of the EDSAC, the first computer with an internally stored program."

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jecel 1736 days ago
I think Wilkes got his award for his software contributions despite being well known for his hardware efforts.

The 2009 award to Chuck Thacker, on the other hand, was clearly based on his contributions to hardware. I have the impression that ACM had a change in policy around that time.

But officially I seem to be wrong:

https://amturing.acm.org/bysubject.cfm?cat=16 https://amturing.acm.org/bysubject.cfm?cat=15

In the "hardware" category Wilkes is listed as the only one, while Thacker, with Brooks, Cocke and Wilkes are in the "computer architecture" category.

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