2025/08/26
From Bones to Turing Machines
The Lebombo Bone and Other Ancient Mathematical Objects
African Binary code
Turing Machine Simulator
Turing Machine Simulator 2
Turing Machine Simulator 3 (Java)
Some resources about the Abacus
The Abacus in Various Number Systems
Demo (The Chinese Abacus)
Mechanical Calculators
The Pascaline
The Antikythera Mechanism
The Antikythera Mechanism
NOVA: Ancient Computer
Babbage, Lovelace and the Analytical Engine
The Difference Engine
The Analytical Engine
9 Neat Facts About the World's First Computer Programmer, Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace and the Analytical Engine
Helping Ada Lovelace with her Homework: Classroom Exercises from a Victorian Calculus Course
Cool implementation of Babbage's Difference Engine using LEGO! Photos, description of adder and carry propagation logic, mechanical issues, etc. at: By Andy Carol
Von Neumann's Computer Archicture
Von Neumann, J. (1945). “First draft of a report on the EDVAC". Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania. DOI: 10.5479/sil.538961.39088011475779.
John von Neumann and the “Report on the EDVAC” from An An Illustrated History of Computers.
Dyson, George. Turing's cathedral: the origins of the digital universe. Pantheon, 2012.
African Binary code
Turing Machine Simulator
Turing Machine Simulator 2
Turing Machine Simulator 3 (Java)
Some resources about the Abacus
The Abacus in Various Number Systems
Demo (The Chinese Abacus)
Mechanical Calculators
The Pascaline
The Antikythera Mechanism
NOVA: Ancient Computer
Babbage, Lovelace and the Analytical Engine
The Difference Engine
The Analytical Engine
9 Neat Facts About the World's First Computer Programmer, Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace and the Analytical Engine
Helping Ada Lovelace with her Homework: Classroom Exercises from a Victorian Calculus Course
Cool implementation of Babbage's Difference Engine using LEGO! Photos, description of adder and carry propagation logic, mechanical issues, etc. at: By Andy Carol
Von Neumann's Computer Archicture
Von Neumann, J. (1945). “First draft of a report on the EDVAC". Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania. DOI: 10.5479/sil.538961.39088011475779.
John von Neumann and the “Report on the EDVAC” from An An Illustrated History of Computers.
Dyson, George. Turing's cathedral: the origins of the digital universe. Pantheon, 2012.
Labels: #Computation, #Turing
2025/08/21
Module 1 - From Borges to Shannon
Some pointers to the Jorge Luis Borges stories we discussed in class.
The Library of Babel
The Garden of Forking Paths
Interview with Jorge Luis Borges Borges' biography.
Information Basics
"The heart of his theory is a simple but very general model of communication: A transmitter encodes information into a signal, which is corrupted by noise and then decoded by the receiver. Despite its simplicity, Shannon’s model incorporates two key insights: isolating the information and noise sources from the communication system to be designed, and modeling both of these sources probabilistically. He imagined the information source generating one of many possible messages to communicate, each of which had a certain probability. The probabilistic noise added further randomness for the receiver to disentangle." Full article @ Quanta Magazine.
Entropy Applet
Letter frequency in English
Word and Letter Frequency in English
Entropy of English
Text Mechanic - Text Manipulation Tools
Shuffle Letters and Narakeet.
1952 – “Theseus” Maze-Solving Mouse @ cyberneticzoo.com
The Library of Babel
The Garden of Forking Paths
Interview with Jorge Luis Borges Borges' biography.
"The heart of his theory is a simple but very general model of communication: A transmitter encodes information into a signal, which is corrupted by noise and then decoded by the receiver. Despite its simplicity, Shannon’s model incorporates two key insights: isolating the information and noise sources from the communication system to be designed, and modeling both of these sources probabilistically. He imagined the information source generating one of many possible messages to communicate, each of which had a certain probability. The probabilistic noise added further randomness for the receiver to disentangle." Full article @ Quanta Magazine.
Entropy Applet
Letter frequency in English
Word and Letter Frequency in English
Entropy of English
Text Mechanic - Text Manipulation Tools
Shuffle Letters and Narakeet.
1952 – “Theseus” Maze-Solving Mouse @ cyberneticzoo.com
Claude Shannon Demonstrating Theseus
Labels: #Borges, #information, #Shannon
