I love the concept of the Turing Machine...even though frankly I don't really understand it. It just makes me think...a mechanical creation with a computational power equal to anything produced my modern computers.
It's evocative. I see a clacking, scrawling, erasing clatter of wood, wire and clunking metal, emitting raw heat with the speed of its working.
Busy Beavers, Operations, and Halts. Results output on a long paper tape.
The Steampunk Captain surveys the results and makes computations of scientific fact, and navigational corrections to the course of the great iron spaceship straight out of Jules Verne. The gunnery officer calculates his deflection to shoot accurately upon the martian enemies as they speed by in their heliothopters, and the engineer predicts the temperature of his great whirring bearings with his own Turing Machine in the engine room.
The best thing about Turing Machines? They don't really exist. They can do anything you want, virtually. I can make one on the table over there merely by imagining it, and it could do anything I wanted it too, if I so wished.
I wish I could make a real one, my mechanical passport to a better life.
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