Practical computers don’t quite follow the design of a Turing Machine, but if we are prepared to sacrifice its need for an infinitely long paper tape it’s quite possible to build one.

Named after English scientist Alan Turing, a Turing machine is a finite state machine that reads a tape divided into cells. The Turing machine examines the symbol in each cell and based on the ...

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.