CWI researchers Jeroen van den Bos en Davy Landman from CWI built a working Turing machine out of LEGO bricks. This machine shows the working of a computer, based on the ideas of the famous British mathematician Alan Turing in 1936. Turing (1912-1954) is known as the founding father of computer science and artificial intelligence, and as Enigma code breaker in World War II. He was one of the few people of his time that realized the influence that computers could have on society. Van den Bos and Landman used a single LEGO Mindstorms NXT set to build the Turing machine, to make it easy to reproduce for those interested. It is on display until 6 October at the temporary exhibition ‘Turing’s Legacy’ at CWI, organized during the Turing Year 2012 to commemorate Alan Turing’s centenary on 23 June. The exhibition at CWI covers Alan Turing’s work and shows how his ideas are applied in contemporary research.
More information:
http://www.legoturingmachine.org/
video: http://vimeo.com/44202270
