双语畅销书《艾伦图灵传》第8章:水银延时线(43)
Very broadly it works using principles developed by your staff during the war for a certain Foreign Office project, and we want to be able to take advantage of this, enlisting the help ...
in particular of Mr Flowers who has had much experience in working out the electronic side of it.
特别是弗洛文斯先生，他在电子领域具有丰富的经验。The initial response from the Post Office was encouraging, and on 17 April Darwin was able to present to the Advisory Council of the DSIR a cogent plan of action, which showed that he had by this time marshalled the essential ideas:
达尔文首先从邮政实验室得到了令人鼓舞的回应，并于4月17日被获准就具体的行动计划，向科学与工业研究部咨询委员会做一个报告，他在报告中阐述了基本的想法：
possibility of the new machine started from a paper by Dr A.M. Turing some years ago, when he showed what a wide range of mathematical problems could be solved, in idea at any rate, by laying down the rules and leaving a machine to do the rest.
……该新型机器的思想起源，很有可能是图灵博士多年以前的一篇论文，当时他表明，只要将特定的规则赋予机器，机器就可以自动地解决很大范围内的数学问题。Dr Turing is now on the staff of the NPL and is responsible for the theoretical side of the present project, and also for the design of many of the more practical details.
图灵博士目前正在国家物理实验室工作，他负责这个项目的理论部分，以及实际设计中的许多具体细节。It gave three examples of large calculations that it would be able to perform, and explained:
他列举了三个大规模计算的例子，然后又解释：The complete machine will naturally be costly; it is estimated that it may call for over 50,000 pounds, but probably not twice as much.
若建造一台完整的这种机器，显然需要花费巨额成本，目前估计会超过50, 000英镑，也可能是这个的两倍。A smaller one, containing the essential characteristics, could be constructed first, perhaps for a cost of 10,000 pounds, but its chief function would be to reveal some of the details of design that cannot be planned without trial, and its scope would be too limited to be worth constructing for its own sake.
因此，我们可以先建造一个具备基本功能的原型机，这样就只需要大约10, 000英镑，就能实现其主要功能，并能获得一些具体的设计细节，这是必须通过实验才能得到的。This would involve development work on delay lines and trigger circuits, and this part of the work would be undertaken by the Post Office, where facilities and specially trained staff exist, with the collaboration of Dr Turing and his assistants. ...
这个原型项目，涉及到邮政实验室的延迟线与触发电路，那里拥有所需的设备和受过良好训练的人员，包括图灵博士的助手和同事……
