>His modified teleprinter code turned letters and symbols on a keyboard into patterns of five hole-positions on punched paper tape that the computer could read directly.
In case anyone is confused as to what this means: I think it must have been written by someone who had no understanding of the content and as a result doesn't make sense.
Turing didn't modify the 5-channel teleprinter code at all : it had existed in some form since 1888[2] and 5-channel teleprinters were a "thing" in common usage at the time for telegraph messages, that were just re-purposed for use with computers. What he did was to define the machine's instruction set such that it could (with difficulty) be input directly on a teleprinter. It was of course _that_ encoding that he invented. The programmer would therefore type what looks like modem noise into a teleprinter, punching tape as they typed. The tape could then be loaded onto the Mk1 for execution.
Here's the manual they refer to in the article (with an amusing hand-edit by Turning removing the references to Ferranti and changing the machine's name from their MkI to his MkII):
In case anyone is confused as to what this means: I think it must have been written by someone who had no understanding of the content and as a result doesn't make sense.
Turing didn't modify the 5-channel teleprinter code at all : it had existed in some form since 1888[2] and 5-channel teleprinters were a "thing" in common usage at the time for telegraph messages, that were just re-purposed for use with computers. What he did was to define the machine's instruction set such that it could (with difficulty) be input directly on a teleprinter. It was of course _that_ encoding that he invented. The programmer would therefore type what looks like modem noise into a teleprinter, punching tape as they typed. The tape could then be loaded onto the Mk1 for execution.
Here's the manual they refer to in the article (with an amusing hand-edit by Turning removing the references to Ferranti and changing the machine's name from their MkI to his MkII):
[1] http://www.alanturing.net/programmers_handbook/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudot_code