Abstract

The first of the authors is an engineer, the second a logician, and they have collaborated to produce a systematic and comprehensive treatise and textbook on the theory of automata—computing machines viewed abstractly—which presupposes only a slight familiarity with logic; there is a long first chapter which develops propositional and predicate logic; the stipulation of logical operators, the "nets" constructed therefrom, and their physical realization comprise the next two chapters. The representation of automata in input-output tables and flow diagrams, and the study of operators in structures come next; the last two chapters concern various practical ways of synthesizing automata and measuring the complexity of logical nets. This is one of the series on logic and foundations of mathematics; the translation from Russian was edited by J. C. Shepherdson.—P. J. M.