One of the problems with a classic Turing machine is the tape must be infinitely long. [Mark’s] Turing Ring still doesn’t have an infinite tape, but it does make it circular to save space. That along ...

In 1936, the British mathematician Alan Turing came up with an idea for a universal computer. It was a simple device: an infinite strip of tape covered in zeros and ones, together with a machine that ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: The Busy Beaver number, or BB(n), represents a mathematical problem that tries to calculate the longest possible run-time of a Turing machine ...