Frank Honywill George: Computer

Frank Honywill George was British psychologist. Explore interesting quotes on computer.
Frank Honywill George: 18 quotes0 likes

“These computing machines had already been designed, and some built, by {[w|Vannevar Bush}}, Norbert Wiener, and others, and were almost ready-made for the job. These scientists, as well as others such as von Neumann, Shannon and Bigelow, were in a position to see that machines of an electronic kind were ideally suited to carry out the whole of the operations of range-finding and location without any human intervention whatever.
These electronic computing machines were already developed to a very high degree of efficiency for the solution of mathematical equations, and some technical difficulties had led to the suggestion that a process of scanning, similar to that used in television, might be incorporated into the computer. Another innovation was the use of binary notation rather than decimal notation as in the early Harvard Mark I computer.”

Frank Honywill George

Source: The Brain As A Computer (1962), p.18

“The title of the book, The Brain as a Computer, is intended to convey something of the methodology involved; the idea is to regard the brain itself as if it were a computer-type control system, in the belief that by so doing we are making explicit what for some time has been implicit in the biological sciences.”

Frank Honywill George

Source: The Brain As A Computer (1962), p.1 as cited in: T. Zetenyi (1988) Fuzzy Sets in Psychology. p.346

“The sudden recent rise to prominence of cybernetics was due, immediately, to World War II. There existed then a series of problems which had not previously been met. The main one was that of range-finding for anti-aircraft guns in high-speed aerial warfare. The older systems involved human computers and these, with manually controlled locators, were wholly inadequate for the job in hand. The essence of the process involved was to track and predict the direction, velocity, and height of enemy aircraft. The human being's part in the operation was much too slow and inaccurate, and there were people available with machines already developed to do the job adequately; these machines were, of course, computing machines.”

Frank Honywill George

Source: The Brain As A Computer (1962), p.18

“Cybernetics is concerned primarily with the construction of theories and models in science, without making a hard and fast distinction between the physical and the biological sciences. The theories and models occur both in symbols and in hardware, and by 'hardware* we shall mean a machine or computer built in terms of physical or chemical, or indeed any handleable parts. Most usually we shall think of hardware as meaning electronic parts such as valves and relays. Cybernetics insists, also, on a further and rather special condition that distinguishes it from ordinary scientific theorizing: it demands a certain standard of effectiveness. In this respect it has acquired some of the same motive power that has driven research on modern logic, and this is especially true in the construction and application of artificial languages and the use of operational definitions. Always the search is for precision and effectiveness, and we must now discuss the question of effectiveness in some detail. It should be noted that when we talk in these terms we are giving pride of place to the theory of automata at the expense, at least to some extent, of feedback and information theory.”

Frank Honywill George

Source: The Brain As A Computer (1962), p.2