LEGO Turing Machine DIY guide

I am quite sure that many of us did spot just what Google did with their Google Doodle to commemorate Alan Turing’s 100th birthday recently, so if you are still all excited about Alan Turing and his Turing machine, some smart aleck decided to come up with the idea of a DIY Turing Machine – using what else but the building blocks of the universe, which would be LEGO bricks, of course. As part of their tribute to Alan Turing’s 100th birthday, Davy Landman, Jereon van den Bos, and Paul Klint churned out a Turning Machine like the one you can see above.

The Lego bricks required can be purchased oline, where the trio of Dutch researchers have also managed to put up the machine’s software to GitHub, one of the more popular code repositories around. Landman told Wired, “The beauty of the Turing Machine is that it is conceptually a very simple device.” In order to build one, make sure you have some tape handy, something that will help move it backwards and forward, as well as a head which can read and write symbols.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Gadgets
Tags: Lego