Automata and Finite Automata
C. Y. Lee · Bell System Technical Journal · 1960
Since it is not clear, in general, how an automaton should best be characterized, one of the purposes of this paper is to find ways to go from one characterization to another. In doing so, we hare not been completely impartial — the programming approach has been emphasized more than the others. There are perhaps two reasons for this emphasis: First and the more obvious one is the closeness between theoretical programming discussed here and programming of digital computers. Secondly, the programming approach has provided a way of looking at automata that seems to make certain ideas less obscure — the construction of a universal program in Section. III of this paper is one such example. In the theory of finite automata, Theorem 3 is an attempt to unify the ideas of complete and partial automata, which have generally been treated separately in the past.