Like most wartime scientific work, it was not so much that it needed the most advanced knowledge of the day.
就像大部分军用科研工作一样,最重要的并不是运用最先进的理论知识,
It was rather that it required the same kind of skill that was used in advanced research, but applied to more elementary problems.
而是运用最先进的研究方法,把它用在最基础的问题上。
The idea of automating processes was familiar enough to the twentieth century;
自动化的想法,在二十世纪是很普遍的,
it did not need the author of Computable Numbers.
并不是只有《可计算数》的作者才知道。
But his serious interest in mathematical machines, his fascination with the idea of working like a machine, was extraordinarily relevant.
但是,艾伦对于数学机器很有兴趣、对机械化想法很有兴趣,这是非常有价值的。
Again, the 'contradictions' and 'consistency' conditions of the plugboard were concerned only with a decidedly finite problem, and not with anything like Gdel's theorem, which concerned the infinite variety of the theory of numbers.
配线板的矛盾或相容,只是一个确定的、有限的问题,并不是像哥德尔定理那样,涉及到变化无穷的数论。
But the analogy with the formalist conception of mathematics, in which implications were to be followed through mechanically, was still a striking one.
但是,形式化的数学概念和分析方法,仍然会在其中起到很大的作用。
Alan was able to embody this idea in the design of a new form of Bombe at the beginning of 1940.
1940年初,艾伦在新型炸弹机的设计中体现了这个想法。
Practical construction began, and was pursued with a speed inconceivable in peacetime, under the direction of Harold 'Doc' Keen at the British Tabulating Machinery factory at Letchworth.
在英国报表机器公司的哈罗德·克伊恩的帮助下,该机器投入了实际制造,其进度之快,是和平时期无法想象的。