Turing Machines

[Gadd]

Hey everyone, I was wondering if anyone knew a good easy read that could explain Turing Machines to me. I don't know why but for some reason It looks interesting from what I have seen so far. I want to somehow create a turing machine of my own It's just that I do now know how to use, what it's even meant for, and how to make (the make part is easy once I know what it is.) Thanks in advance.

[DemonWasp]

Turing machines aren't meant to be built -- they're a theoretical construct that's used as the basis for proving theories about computability (what can and cannot be computed, how long computation MUST take, etc). From the Wikipedia article: "The Turing machine is not intended as a practical computing technology, but rather as a hypothetical device representing a computing machine. Turing machines help computer scientists understand the limits of mechanical computation."

That said, nearly all computers are essentially the same as a Turing machine: they record data on memory ("tape"), have instructions ("action table"), and an instruction pointer ("state register"). The primary difference seems to be that the Turing machine has access to an arbitrary size of "tape", while a real computer has a finite amount of memory.

In short: you don't build a Turing machine. They are a thought tool.

[Tony]

but once you get over the whole "infinite amount of storage space" thing, one can be build for fun... out of lego. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYw2ewoO6c4