Chapter 1: Foundations of Computing #

Overview #

Topcis covered in “Was ist ein Computer?": a short history of computing machines - three key characteristics of a computer - the Turing machine - an instruction replaces one character by another -  what is a program - what is the Turing machine good for - Church’s thesis - DNA as a memory - proteins as tools - how a DNA segment is translated into a protein - proteins can control the production of other proteins - comparison of Turing machine and a cell - DNA computing - Hamilton path problem.

Figures #

The following illustrations from the book Inside the Computer’s Brain (Dem Computer ins Hirn geschaut) are available for download and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Using the figures

You are free to use, share, and adapt the figures below for any non-commercial purposes, e. g., for oral presentations and classes. Attribution should be given to both book illustrator (Susanne Staubli) and book author (Eckart Zitzler), so please include an acknowledgement such as: “Illustration by Susanne Staubli, Eckart Zitzler”.

Fig. 1.1 : JPG / PDF

Fig. 1.2 : JPG / PDF

Fig. 1.5 : JPG / PDF

Fig. 1.14 : JPG / PDF

Fig. 1.15 : JPG / PDF

Fig. 1.16 : JPG / PDF

Fig. 1.17 : JPG / PDF

Fig. 1.19 : JPG / PDF

Fig. 1.20 : JPG / PDF

Fig. 1.23 : JPG / PDF

Fig. 1.24 : JPG / PDF

Fig. 1.26 : JPG / PDF

Fig. 1.27 : JPG / PDF

Fig. 1.28 : JPG / PDF

Fig. 1.31 : JPG / PDF

Fig. 1.32 : JPG / PDF

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3

Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6

Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9