雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第8章:水銀延時線(43)
Very broadly it works using principles developed by your staff during the war for a certain Foreign Office project, and we want to be able to take advantage of this, enlisting the help ...
in particular of Mr Flowers who has had much experience in working out the electronic side of it.
特別是弗洛文斯先生，他在電子領域具有豐富的經驗。The initial response from the Post Office was encouraging, and on 17 April Darwin was able to present to the Advisory Council of the DSIR a cogent plan of action, which showed that he had by this time marshalled the essential ideas:
達爾文首先從郵政實驗室得到了令人鼓舞的迴應，並於4月17日被獲准就具體的行動計劃，向科學與工業研究部諮詢委員會做一個報告，他在報告中闡述了基本的想法：
possibility of the new machine started from a paper by Dr A.M. Turing some years ago, when he showed what a wide range of mathematical problems could be solved, in idea at any rate, by laying down the rules and leaving a machine to do the rest.
……該新型機器的思想起源，很有可能是圖靈博士多年以前的一篇論文，當時他表明，只要將特定的規則賦予機器，機器就可以自動地解決很大範圍內的數學問題。Dr Turing is now on the staff of the NPL and is responsible for the theoretical side of the present project, and also for the design of many of the more practical details.
圖靈博士目前正在國家物理實驗室工作，他負責這個項目的理論部分，以及實際設計中的許多具體細節。It gave three examples of large calculations that it would be able to perform, and explained:
他列舉了三個大規模計算的例子，然後又解釋：The complete machine will naturally be costly; it is estimated that it may call for over 50,000 pounds, but probably not twice as much.
若建造一臺完整的這種機器，顯然需要花費鉅額成本，目前估計會超過50, 000英鎊，也可能是這個的兩倍。A smaller one, containing the essential characteristics, could be constructed first, perhaps for a cost of 10,000 pounds, but its chief function would be to reveal some of the details of design that cannot be planned without trial, and its scope would be too limited to be worth constructing for its own sake.
因此，我們可以先建造一個具備基本功能的原型機，這樣就只需要大約10, 000英鎊，就能實現其主要功能，並能獲得一些具體的設計細節，這是必須通過實驗才能得到的。This would involve development work on delay lines and trigger circuits, and this part of the work would be undertaken by the Post Office, where facilities and specially trained staff exist, with the collaboration of Dr Turing and his assistants. ...
這個原型項目，涉及到郵政實驗室的延遲線與觸發電路，那裏擁有所需的設備和受過良好訓練的人員，包括圖靈博士的助手和同事……
