雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第9章:退隱山林(73)
Jefferson proved a good publicity agent for Manchester, for The Times published photographs of the adolescent machine, and the Illustrated London News followed on 25 June.
By chance, these happened to upstage the grand opening of the EDSAC in Cambridge.
這碰巧搶了劍橋EDSAC的運行儀式的風頭。Wilkes' team had made rapid progress, and had already completed the building of an EDVAC-type computer, with mercury delay line storage, well ahead of any American development.
威爾克斯的團隊進展也很迅速，他們造出來一臺類似於EDVAC的計算機，並採用水銀延遲線作爲存儲器，這比美國的任何項目都更爲先進。
It had a storage capacity of only thirty-two delay lines, and its digit time was two microseconds, twice that of the planned ACE.
雖然它只有32條延遲線，每位數據耗時2微秒，是ACE計劃的兩倍，但它至少是一臺真正能運行的機器。But it worked; and if the 'baby machine' at Manchester was the first working electronic stored program computer, the EDSAC was the first to be available for serious mathematical work.
如果說曼徹斯特的"嬰兒機"是世界上第一臺能運行的存儲程序式電子計算機，那麼EDSAC就是世界上第一臺可以正式用於數學研究的計算機。Alan attended the inaugural conference, and gave a talk on 24 June 1949 entitled Checking a Large Routine16 He described a sophisticated procedure, appropriate for long programs in which it would be easy to lose track of the fate of numbers in store.
1949年6月24日，圖靈出席了EDSAC的運行儀式，並做了一個題爲《控制大型程序》的報告。他給出了一套巧妙的方法，用於控制那些容易丟失數據的長程序。Illustrating his points, he did some sums on the blackboard, and lost everyone by writing the numbers backwards as he was used to doing at Manchester.
爲了闡明他的想法，他轉頭在黑板上做了大量的演算，這時他就像是在曼徹斯特一樣，把整個世界都拋到腦後了。'I do not think that he was being funny, or trying to score off us,' wrote Wilkes,17 'it was simply that he could not appreciate that a trivial matter of that kind could affect anybody's understanding one way or the other.'
威爾克斯說："我覺得他並不是故意在表演，也不是故意無視我們，他只是沒有意識到，這些過於瑣碎的細節會影響別人的理解。It was a 'fussy little detail', which perhaps masked the irony of the fact that while the EDSAC people had only begun to write programs in May 1949, soon discovering the idea of the sub-routine, Alan had been writing and perhaps checking them for years.
"然而，"這些過於瑣碎的細節"，可能掩飾了一個有點諷刺的事實：EDSAC的研究人員到1949年纔開始寫程序，然後想到了"子程序"的想法，而圖靈在很多年前就做到了這些，並且進行了大量的論證。Meanwhile the ACE did survive after all. Alan had resigned at the lowest ebb.
與此同時，ACE項目又起死回生了。圖靈辭職的時候，正是這個項目最艱難的時候，Then Thomas, who was in charge of the electronics, resigned, and his successor, F.M. Colebrook, proved to have a very different attitude.
在那之後不久，托馬斯（負責電子工程的那位）也辭職了，而他的繼任者F·M·克爾布魯克則有着完全不同的風格。In fact, as soon as Thomas was gone, the mathematicians moved into the engineers' building.
托馬斯一走，數學家們就搬進了工程樓。
