Turing's pre-war analog computers: The fatherhood of the modern computer revisited

ALAN TURING IS often praised as the foremost figure in the historical process that led to the rise of the modern electronic computer. Particular attention has been devoted to the purported connection between a "Universal Turing Machine" (UTM), as introduced in Turing's article of 1936,²⁷ and the design and implementation in the mid-1940s of the first storedprogram computers, with particular emphasis on the respective proposals of John von Neumann for the EDVAC30 and of Turing himself for the ACE.²⁶.