雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第9章:退隱山林(128)

Alan Turing himself always sought to play down any such comparison, which in his view was irrelevant to the essential thesis that the brain could be regarded as a discrete state machine.

圖靈本人並不看好這種輕率的類比，他認爲這與"大腦可以視爲離散狀態的機器"是無關的。

Thus in the 1948 report for the NPL he had written:"We could produce fairly accurate electrical models to copy the behaviour of nerves, but there seems very little point in doing so."

1948年，在他寫給國家物理實驗室的報告中，他寫道：“我們可以製造精確的電子模型，來複制神經元的行爲，但我不認爲這樣做有什麼必要。”

"It would be rather like putting a lot of work into cars which walked on legs instead of continuing to use wheels."

“汽車用輪子可以跑得很好，爲什麼非要給它安上腿。”

The Mersenne prime problem was a highly artificial, if ingenious, application of the growing Manchester computer.

曼徹斯特機所做的梅森素數問題，是一個人爲設定的問題，

Only from the autumn of 1949 could it be applied to 'regular' problems.

這臺機器實際上直到1949年秋天，纔開始應用到常規的問題上。

Besides those of Alan Turing himself, as later described, it was used for optical calculations, tracing rays through systems of lenses, and for some mathematical work in connection with guided missiles.

除了圖靈自己的那些問題之外，它還用於光學計算、追蹤透鏡系統中的射線，以及與導彈有關的一些數學問題。

X-ray measurements give only the amplitudes of the different frequency components in the diffracted X-rays, and not the phases.

通過X射線測定，只能得到各個頻率成分的振幅，而無法得到相位。

The analysis depends upon guessing the phases, the criterion of a correct guess being that when the amplitudes and phases are put together,

因此必須要把相位推導出來。正確相位的標準是，當把它與振幅結合起來時，

they lead to a picture of the crystal which is in accord with physical reality, with the right number of atoms and a positive electron density.

能夠得出與實際情況吻合的晶體狀態，包括準確的原子數量和電子密度。

This is exactly the same idea as guessing a key, given a piece of cipher-text: the criterion of a correct guess being that it give a sensible message.

這與推導密鑰是完全一樣的過程，對於一個密文來說，正確推導的標準，就是能夠從中密文中得出合理的信息。