What is a Universal Turing Machine?
The gating logic for circuit boards in all general computers descends from a logical procedure known as a Universal Turing Machine (UTM). The logic for this algorithm by Alan Turing (1912-54) was written in 1936 and published in 1937 in the Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society. This paper, On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem”, planted the seminal idea for all general computers. Detail of the UTM binary text with gold leaf. Click here for full text page (719 kb). The UTM version for these art works is quoted from Roger Penrose The Emperor s New Mind (Chapter 2) and consists of 5,495 binary digits. These digits represent an algorithm, in expanded binary, for a UTM. In the tradition of illuminated sacred texts this algorithm is presented as a highly treasured text because it played a seminal role in the birth of 20th Century computers. The form enhancements celebrating the algorithm are generated with the artist s code that requires the logic o
