The Motivation That Led To The Turing Machine

Many people probably think that Alan Turing was trying to invent a computer when he designed his imaginary Turing Machine. I'm not sure if that even crossed his mind.

Alan Turing probably spent a lot of time wondering about some questions that mathematicians have wondered about for hundreds of years. Among these are: Can every conjecture in mathematics be either proved or disproved? And if so, is there some universal algorithm that can be applied to every conceivable conjecture, so that if all the steps are followed, it will tell you whether the conjecture is in fact a theorem, or whether, by means of a counterexample or otherwise, show that it is false.

The motivation behind the Turing Machine can probably be best understood by considering the events that led to its creation. This in itself is an interesting portion of the history of mathematics and includes the names of such famous logicians and mathematicians as Georg Cantor, Jan Łukasiewicz, Alfred North Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, David Hilbert, Guiseppe Peano, Kurt Gödel, Alonzo Church, and of course, Alan Turing.