On Saturday 22 April 2006 2:43 pm, Ross Jordan wrote: > On Sat, Apr 22, 2006 at 02:31:59PM -0400, William Case wrote: > > Electrical data consists of a set, or continuous stream, of lower or > > higher voltage pulses or bits. Data is transformed by transistors > > switching electrical data from one circuit to another. The possible > > transformations are: changing a higher voltage bit to a lower voltage > > and vice versa; arithmetic addition of two sets of data bits; and, > > moving data from one meaningful location to another meaningful > > location within the computer." > > The definition you say is perfectly valid; but I think could be > generalized somewhat. For example, many consider the abacus; the > ancient Chinese calculator tool to be a type of "computer". So I > might be inclined to give a definition such as: As these LEGO implementations show http://anon.razorwire.com/lego/ http://www.mapageweb.umontreal.ca/cousined/lego/5-Machines/Turing/Turing.html http://acarol.woz.org/ -- Collector of vintage computers http://www.ncf.ca/~ba600 Machines to trade http://www.ncf.ca/~ba600/trade.html Open Source Weekend http://www.osw.ca