雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第8章:水銀延時線(62)
But Delilah had been part of the preparations for the ACE, and this, Alan Turing's logical Overlord, was what mattered.
The plans were all ready, and only needed the signal to start.
ACE計劃現在已是萬事俱備，只欠東風。And they did at least gain a sort of second wind on 31 October 1946, when Mountbatten, as president of the Institution of Radio Engineers, gave a speech that conveyed—however inaccurately—the excitement of what had happened in the new technology of communication and control.
1946年10月31日，無線電工程師協會主席蒙巴頓，滿懷激情地發表了一個不怎麼嚴謹的演講，關於通信與控制領域的最新進展。
It was as far beyond the old days of the Glorious y as they had been ahead of the papyrus scroll:
現在的情況確實日新月異，相比於古埃及莎草紙，他們確實有了很大的進步：The war not only taught us a great deal about techniques, but it proved the occasion for new departures in application, particularly in electronics, which had enormously augmented our present human senses.
這場戰爭不僅爲我們帶來許多新技術，而且還讓我們看到了許多老技術的新用途，尤其是電子技術，它與我們人類的感官系統有巨大區別。Apart from radar, which aided to a remarkable degree the sense of sight, we might in future be able, by pooling and transforming the potentialities of other forms of radiation, such as light, heat, sound, X-rays, gamma-rays and cosmic rays, to receive the counterpart of radar screen pictures from inside our bodies, or even from individual body cells.
除了擴展視覺的雷達技術之外，將來我們也許還可以利用其它形式的輻射，比如光、熱、聲、X射線、伽瑪射線以及宇宙射線，來將我們身體內部的圖像顯示在熒幕上，甚至可以看到每一個細胞。Or perhaps we might receive them from the interior of the earth, or from the stars and e was reason to believe that facilities for impressing information and knowledge on the human brain be extended by the direct application of electrical currents to the human body or brain. ...
也許我們還可以探索地球內部，還有宇宙中的其它星體和星系……我們有理由相信，利用電子技術，還可以擴展人類的思維能力。The stage was now set for 'the most Wellsian development of all'.
這是一個全新的舞臺，是人類歷史迄今爲止最大的進步。It was considered possible to evolve an electronic brain, which would perform functions analogous to those at present undertaken by the semi-automatic portions of the human brain.
這完全有可能發展出一個電子大腦，它可以承擔人類大腦的一部分工作。It would be done by radio valves, activating each other in the way that brain cells do; one such machine was the electronic numeral (sic) integrator and computer (ENIAC), employing 18,000 valves ...
它將會由真空管組成，按照腦神經細胞的方式運轉，電子數字積分計算機（ENIAC）就是這樣的機器，它使用了18, 000個真空管……Machines were now in use which could exercise a degree of memory, while some were being designed to employ those hitherto human prerogatives of choice and judgment. One of them could even be made to play a rather mediocre game of chess! ...
這些機器將具有一定的記憶功能，以及人類的選擇與決策功能，有人還正在設計一臺機器，用來玩我們普通的象棋！
