双语畅销书《艾伦图灵传》第4章:彼岸新星(94)
Alan was not the only person to be thinking about mechanical computation in 1939.
There were a number of ideas and initiatives, reflecting the growth of new electrical industries.
电子工业的发展，产生了很多新的想法和方案。Several projects were on hand in the United States.
在美国，游戏已经开始了。
One of these was the 'differential analyser' that the American engineer Vannevar Bush had designed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1930.
其中一个是美国工程师范内瓦·布什1930年在麻省理工学院设计的差分机，This could set up physical analogues of certain differential equations – the class of problem of most interest in physics and engineering.
它可以为某些方程式建立物理的模拟。A similar machine had then been built by the British physicist D.R. Hartree out of Meccano components at Manchester University.
曼彻斯特大学的英国物理学家D.R.哈特里也制造了一个类似的机器。This in turn had been followed by the commissioning of another differential analyser at Cambridge, where in 1937 the mathematical faculty had sanctioned a new Mathematical Laboratory to house it.
紧接着，剑桥也建造了一个差分机，1937年，数学系还批准了一个新的实验室用来安置它，One of Alan's fellow 'B-stars' of 1934, the applied mathematician M.V. Wilkes, had been appointed as its junior member of staff.
并安排应用数学家M.V.威尔克斯，艾伦1934年'B-stars'计划的伙伴来负责这台机器。Such a machine would have been useless for the zeta-function problem.
但是，这些机器对ζ函数问题是没有用的。Differential analysers could simulate only one special kind of mathematical system, and that only to a limited and very approximate extent.
差分机只能模拟一种特定的问题，而且还有很多限制。Similarly the Turing zeta-function machine would be entirely specific to the even more special problem on hand.
与此类似，图灵的ζ函数机也只能处理一类特定的问题。It had no connection whatever with the Universal Turing Machine. It could hardly have been less universal.
这与通用图灵机完全不同，它很难推广到其它问题。
