雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第9章:退隱山林(4)

This happened on 21 June 1948, and the world's first working program on an electronic stored-program computer, to find the highest factor of an integer by crude brute force triAl, had been written by Kilburn.

這一天是1948年6月21日，這是全世界第一個在存儲程序式電子計算機上成功運行的程序，通過笨拙的暴力枚舉，求解出一個整數的最大因數。吉爾博記錄：

Nothing was ever the same again. We knew that only time and effort were needed to make a machine of meaningful size.

這樣的小試驗沒有再重複，因爲我們已經知道，建造一臺真正有意義的機器，現在只是個時間和努力的問題了。

We doubled our effort immediately by taking on a second technician.

我們立即增加了一位技術人員，以加倍我們的努力。

It was in these circumstances that Kilburn mentioned to Tootill a few days later that 'there's a chap called Turing coming here, he's written a program.'

吉爾博對托蒂爾說："過幾天有個叫圖靈的傢伙要過來，他編了一套程序。"

Williams knew about Alan because of his dealings with the NPL. Kilburn vaguely knew of him.

威廉姆斯之前與國家物理實驗室打過交道，他知道圖靈。

Tootill, who had not heard of him at all, worked on the program.

吉爾博大概也聽說過他，托蒂爾則完全不知道這個人。

He was astonished (and naturally, smugly pleased) to discover it not only to be inefficient but to contain an error.

托蒂爾是那個小程序的作者，他驚訝地發現，他的程序有多麼低效（其實這是很自然的，不用驚訝），而且還存在一個錯誤。

At Manchester they had a machine which actually worked, and this simple fact counted for more than did ingenious or impressive plans.

曼徹斯特現在已經有了一臺真正能工作的計算機，無論多麼天花亂墜的計劃，都不如這個簡單的事實更有吸引力。

It meant that while Alan had been away on his holidays, political considerations had transformed the Manchester set-up.

但是，當圖靈放下工作去度假時，有一些政治因素，使曼徹斯特的項目發生了變化。