William Stanley Jevons: logician and pioneer of computation : 無料・フリー素材/写真
William Stanley Jevons: logician and pioneer of computation / dullhunk
| ライセンス | クリエイティブ・コモンズ 表示 2.1 |
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| 説明 | The first Boolean logical computerJevons was a firm believer that sound logical reasoning was central to good decision making in politics and economics. To assist with teaching his students how to reason logically, Jevons designed various tools to help them develop the deductive reasoning approach.Among these was a logical abacus (a simple collection of wooden sticks, each with a variable assignment written on them) and his logical machine, known as the Logical Piano. The Logical Piano was built in 1869 by a Salford watchmaker and, simply put, was constructed from Jevons' logical abacus connected to a keyboard by sophisticated mechanisms. A user would enter various premises and the machine would return all logical consequences of these premises.Jevons' Logical Piano can be considered the first working mechanical computer. While Charles Babbage designed his Difference Engine for arithmetic and his Analytical Engine for general-purpose computation, Jevons' Logical Piano was designed and constructed to solve problems in logic."It is highly remarkable that when we turn to the kindred science of logic we meet with no real mechanical aids or devices" --WS JevonsThe Logical Piano can be seen as the first automated theorem prover and an initial step towards automated reasoning, which is now an established research area with applications in hardware and software verification, knowledge representation and robotics."Mind thus seems able to impress some of its highest attributes upon matter, and to create its own rival in the wheels and levers of an insensible machine" --WS Jevons Electronic logical computersJevons' approach inspired US art historian Allan Marquand to build and electrically powered logical machine in 1885. Later, in the wake of World War II, surplus components became available that were used to build a number of eletronic logical machines. in 1949 the philosopher Wolfe Mays of the University of Manchester and Dietrich Prinz of Ferranti designed an electronic implementation of Jevons' Logical Piano using relays. As with Jevons, their aim was to facilitate the teaching of logical reasoning. In the last two weeks of October 1952, Mays and Desmond Paul Henry - a fellow Manchester philosopher - held an exhibition at the University's Christie Library called 'Jevonsonia'. Jevons' Logical Piano was proudly displayed alongside Mays' and Prinz's Logical Computer. As Mays, Prinz and others were realising the practical electronic implementations of Jevons' machine, others found different uses for the surplus components of war.In June 1948, The Baby - a machine built by Tom Kilburn and Sir Frederick (Freddie) Williams - ran its first stored program at Manchester. This form of digital computer rapidly proved to be more flexible than its logical counterpart. Automated reasoning has since been developed entirely on general-purpose digital computers, rather than dedicated logical computers like Jevons', and Manchester has a strong track record in this field. William Stanley Jevons was a remarkable philosopher, economist and pioneer of computer logic. He believed that good decision making required good logical reasoning, and devised algorithms and machines to automate and teach this reasoning: "There was a consciousness on my my mind that I was the discoverer of the true logic of the future I felt a delight such as one can seldom hope to feel. I remembered only too son though how unworthy and weak an instrument I was for accomplishing so great a work" (an extract from Jevons' diary in 1860)See also en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stanley_Jevons and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_abacus |
| 撮影日 | 2022-07-05 15:09:56 |
| 撮影者 | dullhunk , Manchester, United Kingdom |
| タグ | |
| 撮影地 | Hulme, England, UK 地図 |
| カメラ | Pixel 6 , Google |
| 露出 | 0.019 sec (1/52) |
| 開放F値 | f/1.9 |