Uploaded June 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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Schools programme.

What are the ultimate limits to what a computer can do? Oddly enough, this question was answered as long ago as 1936, years before the first computer began to work, by the English mathematician, Alan Turing.

Computer scientist Benedict Nixon demonstrates how even a sophisticated modern supercomputer - like the Atlas computer at London University - operates according to the guiding principles of Alan Turing's theoretical computer. Nixon has built his own variation of some simple Turning Machines, for the purposes of demonstration.


Clip taken from Mathematics in Action, originally broadcast on BBC One, 24 March, 1966.





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