destined to yield the same class of computable functions and thus proposed what became known as the Church-Turing thesis that says that a Turing Machine program can simulate any physically realizable computational process including that of the most powerful digital computers or that of a human mind.
Turing went further down the path of development than did Church by first posing the concept of the Turing Machine associated with his pre-World War II investigations as to the theoretical limitations of computing technology (Science Week, 1999). This was a substantial undertaking given the primitive nature of computers in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
In order to establish these limitations, a simple model had to be defined at the most basic level. In comparing Turing's work to that of Church it is important to realize that Turing proposed his machine for the purpose of formalizing the concept of the algorithm as it relates to computation (Mohr, 2000).
A classical Turing Machine consists of a device that will carry out a program with an infinite strip of paper running through it. On this strip are boxes that contain either a "1" or a "0" (Bloomsbury, 1993). The device originally envisioned by Turing was more complex in that it contained a single input/output tape that was broken down into small sections and the machine, itself, being able to be in one of a set of states that were determined by an algorithm or "Rule Set" (Science Week, 1999).
The Turing Machine is able to read and write upon the strip erasing the previous contents contained within the boxes. It is programmed on a very simple level using a binary system. When one represents the Turing element as the Central Processing Unit of a modern computer (viz. the area in the architecture where calculations are performed) and the strip of paper as the memory element, the analogy is complete. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending upon your perspective, the Turin...