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It is not widely realised that Turing was probably the first person to consider building computing machines out of simple, neuron-like elements connected together into networks in a largely random manner. Turing called his networks ‘unorganised machines’. By the application of what he described as ‘appropriate interference, mimicking education’ an unorganised machine can be trained to perform any task that a Turing machine can carry out, provided the number of ‘neurons’ is sufficient. Turing proposed simulating both the behaviour of the network and the training process by means of a computer program. We outline Turing's connectionist project of 1948.

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Summary. We discuss, first, TUring's role in the development of the computer; second , the early history of Artificial Intelligence (to 1956); and third , TUring's famous imit ation game, now universally known as the TUring t est , which he proposed in cameo form in 1948 and t hen more fully in 1950 and 1952. Various objections have been raised to Turin g's test: we describe some of t he most prominent and explain why, in our view, they fail. Turing and the Computer The Turing MachineIn his first major publication, "On Computable Numbe rs, with an Application to t he Entsc heidungs problem" [91] , TUring introduced his "universal computin g machine" and t he id ea essential t o the modern computer -the concept of cont r olling a comput ing machin e's op erations by means of a program of coded ins tructions stored in the machine's memory. This work had a profou nd influenc e on t he development in t he 1940s of t he electronic st ored-progra m digit al com puter -an influence often neglect ed or deni ed by historians of the computer."The univ ersal com puting machine of 1936~now known simply as t he "universal TUring machine"~is an abstract concept ual model. It consists of a scanner and a limi tless memory-tap e that moves back and forward past t he scanne r. The scanne r reads t he symbols on t he tape and writ es further symbols. The machine has a sm all rep ertoire of basic op erati ons; complexity of operation is achieved by chaining to gether basic op erati ons. The machine is universal in t he sense t hat it can be programmed to carry out any calculati on that could be p erformed by a "human computer" -a clerk who works systemat ically and who has unlimit ed time and an endless supply of paper and pe nc ils.The universal machine has a single, fixed table of instructions built into it. These "hard-wired" ins tructions enable the machine to read and execute symbolically encode d instructions inscrib ed on its t ap e. The data to be worked on are also insc ri be d on the memory-t ap e. By inscribing different programs 1 See, for example, Campb ell-Kelly and Aspray [15]. The nature and scope of TUring's influence is underplayed even in Hodges' biography of Turing [48].C. Teuscher (ed.), Alan Turing: Life and Legacy of a Great Thinker