雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第8章:水銀延時線(9)
Alan's first task was to write a report1, setting out a detailed design of an electronic universal machine, and an account of its operation.
Surprisingly, the report that he submitted did not contain mention of Computable Numbers.
出人意料的是，圖靈提交的報告隻字未提《可計算數》，Instead, it referred to the Draft Report on the EDVAC, with which his report was to be read 'in conjunction'.
反而引用了《EDVAC報告草案》。
However, the ACE proposal was effectively self-contained, and its roots lay not in the EDVAC, but in his own universal machine.
然而，ACE的設計實際上是自洽的，其根源並不是EDVAC，而是圖靈自己的通用機。Some fragmentary notes, dating from this early period, made this clear:
有一段早期的筆記，清楚地表明瞭這一點：'Computable Numbers' it was assumed that all the stored material was arranged linearly,
……在《可計算數》中，我們假設所有的信息都是線性存儲的，so that in effect the accessibility time was directly proportional to the amount of material stored, being essentially the digit time multiplied by the number of digits stored.
讀取時間直接與存儲量成正比，基本上等於讀取一項的時間乘以存儲的項數。This was the essential reason why the arrangement in 'Computable Numbers' could not be taken over as it stood to give a practical form of machine.
這就是爲什麼在實際構造時，不能照搬《可計算數》裏的設計。It was also implicit in an opening paragraph of the report he now wrote, which explained how new problems would be 'virtually only a matter of paper work', with examples, and said:
在報告的開頭段落，也暗示了這一點，圖靈在此處解釋了爲什麼改變機器的功能時不需要改動機器本身，他給出了示例注，並寫道：It may appear somewhat surprising that this can be done.
這是可以實現的，雖然看起來有點難以置信，How can one expect a machine to do all this multitudinous variety of things?
我們怎麼能指望一臺機器能做那麼多不同的事情呢？The answer is that we should consider the machine as doing something quite simple, namely carrying out orders given to it in a standard form which it is able to understand.
要回答這個問題，我們應該考慮到，這是一臺執行指令的機器，我們把一件事分解成基本的指令，指令有標準的格式，使機器能夠理解。
