In 1936 a young British mathematician, Alan Turing , wrote a somewhat obtuse paper about mathematical logic that set a foundation for computing machines and the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Although a detailed description of concept is straightforward, it has a number of steps, so perhaps a gross oversimplification will suffice here. Turing proved that any activity that can be described by a logical series of operations and associated rules, such as a proof in Euclidian geometry, could be performed by a very simple machine (since nicknamed athe Turing Machine).

The machine consisted of a tape divided into boxes (cells) each containing one of only two symbols (i.e., 0 or 1), a read/write device that could read the cell directly under it and either leave it unchanged or erase it and write the other symbol in it, a mechanical way to move the tape one cell left or right, and an internal set of instructions that determine how the machine behaves at each step.

So what? A bit of reflection will show you that a Turing Machine is essentially identical to a modern digital computer.

Really! The PC you are reading this on basically manipulates only two SYMBOLS, the binary numbers zero and one (just like the two Turing-machine symbols), in a stepwise fashion, at each step either changing or leaving unchanged the 0 or 1, based on an internal set of logical instructions, the program.

And there's more . . .