雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第8章:水銀延時線(29)
Although he had shifted the emphasis from the building of a machine, to the construction of programs, there was nothing nebulous about his engineering plans for the ACE.
The delay lines, he wrote,
關於延遲線的問題，他寫道：have been developed for RDF purposes to a degree considerably beyond our requirements in many respects. Designs are available to us, and one such is well suited to mass production.
延遲線的性能指標，超額地滿足了我們的需求，而且它非常適合量產，
An estimate of 20 pounds per delay line would seem quite high enough.
每條延遲線的估算成本最多不超過20英鎊。He did in fact make a visit to the Admiralty Signals Establishment to see T. Gold, who was working there on delay lines.
圖靈還前往海軍通信部門，拜訪了T·歌德，這個人是專門研究延遲線的。His plan was for two hundred mercury delay lines, each with a capacity of 1024 digits.
圖靈的計劃是，200條水銀延遲線，每條容納1024位數字。But the figures, dimensions, costs, and the choice of mercury as the medium, were not taken off the radar engineers' shelf. He worked out the physics himself.
像型號、尺寸、成本，選擇水銀作爲介質，這些本來該由雷達工程師來做的事，圖靈已經全部自己解決了。On the basis of his calculation, mercury was only marginally to be preferred to a mixture of water and alcohol, which he observed would have the same strength as gin.
根據他的計算，水銀只比酒精的水溶液略好一點，He rather hankered after using gin, which would come cheaper than mercury.
所以他還希望用琴酒作爲介質，這樣成本更低。However, he did not propose doing the development work himself.
不過，圖靈並不打算親自來處理這些生產工藝問題，He wanted this to be done by the Colossus engineers, at the Post Office Research Station.
他把這些問題交給了曾經參與巨人機項目的工程師。Flowers was already familiar with delay lines, having been shown Eckert's model in October 1945.
弗洛文斯對延遲線已經非常熟悉了，他在1945年時參觀過埃克特機。
