雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第9章:退隱山林(63)
It was one that produced truly random digits from noise, as opposed to something like a cipher key generator that would produce apparently random but actuAlly determined digits. (That, if he wanted it, he would surely program for himself.)
Perhaps he based his design on the circuit that produced the Rockex key-tapes at Hanslope.
也許他的設計是基於漢斯洛普的爲勞凱克斯機生產密鑰的電路。Geoff Tootill was interested in Alan's ideas, but some of them were particularly impractical in view of the limited time and effort available.
托蒂爾對圖靈的想法很感興趣，但其中一些想法，從時間和資源的角度來看，是非常不現實的。
There was, for instance, a scheme he devised for computer character recognition, which would involve an elaborate system with a television camera in order to transfer a visual image to the cathode ray tube store, and reduce it to a standard size.
比如說，圖靈爲計算機設計了一個符號識別系統，這個設計非常複雜，包括一個攝像機，用來把視覺圖像轉換成陰極射線管的信號，並把它縮放至標準大小。Geoff Tootill was probably the most tolerant of such dreams, but to him as to all on the engineering side, Alan Turing was the brilliant mathematician (or so they heard) but embarrassingly half-baked engineer.
托蒂爾也許是最能接受這類夢想的人，但是對他來說，圖靈雖然是最卓越的數學家（至少聽說是如此），但在工程方面卻是個半吊子。The year 1949 meant the end of his groping efforts to be the academic engineer.
在這一年，圖靈試圖成爲專業工程師的努力，徹底以失敗告終了。Meanwhile the more theoretical side of computer development had become a more public question.
與此同時，計算機的理論方面的發展，成了更加一般化的問題。In 1948 Norbert Wiener had published a book called Cybernetics, defining this word to mean 'Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine'.
1948年，諾伯特·維納出版了一本書，名爲《控制論》，他給這個詞的定義是"關於在動物和機器中進行控制和通信的科學"。It meant the description of the world in which information and logic, rather than energy or material constitution, was what mattered.
這是在信息和邏輯的層面上描述世界，而不是能量或物質，As such it was heavily influenced by the massive wartime technological developments, although the basic ideas, such as feedback, were hardly new.
這受到了戰時技術發展的深重影響，儘管其基本思想，比如反饋，並不是新的想法。Wiener and von Neumann had led a conference in the winter of 1943–4 on 'cybernetic' ideas, but Wiener's book marked the opening up of the subject outside the narrow domain of technical papers.
早在1943年冬天，維納和馮·諾伊曼就召開過一場會議，討論控制論，但是維納的這本書，才正式地標誌着這個課題的誕生。In fact Cybernetics was still very technical, incoherent, and almost unreadable, but the public seized upon it as a magic key which would unlock the secrets of what had happened to the world in the past decade.
《控制論》這本書非常艱深晦澀，幾乎無法讀懂，但是人們仍像握着魔法鑰匙一樣握着它，似乎這把鑰匙能夠解開過去十年間發生的祕密。
