WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

Turing machine
    n 1: a hypothetical computer with an infinitely long memory tape

The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):

Turing Machine

    A hypothetical machine defined in 1935-6 by
   Alan Turing and used for computability theory proofs.  It
   consists of an infinitely long "tape" with symbols (chosen
   from some finite set) written at regular intervals.  A
   pointer marks the current position and the machine is in one
   of a finite set of "internal states".  At each step the
   machine reads the symbol at the current position on the tape.
   For each combination of current state and symbol read, a
   program specifies the new state and either a symbol to write
   to the tape or a direction to move the pointer (left or right)
   or to halt.

   In an alternative scheme, the machine writes a symbol to the
   tape *and* moves at each step.  This can be encoded as a write
   state followed by a move state for the write-or-move machine.
   If the write-and-move machine is also given a distance to move
   then it can emulate an write-or-move program by using states
   with a distance of zero.  A further variation is whether
   halting is an action like writing or moving or whether it is a
   special state.

   [What was Turing's original definition?]

   Without loss of generality, the symbol set can be limited to
   just "0" and "1" and the machine can be restricted to start on
   the leftmost 1 of the leftmost string of 1s with strings of 1s
   being separated by a single 0.  The tape may be infinite in
   one direction only, with the understanding that the machine
   will halt if it tries to move off the other end.

   All computer instruction sets, high level languages and
   computer architectures, including parallel processors, can
   be shown to be equivalent to a Turing Machine and thus
   equivalent to each other in the sense that any problem that
   one can solve, any other can solve given sufficient time and
   memory.

   Turing generalised the idea of the Turing Machine to a
   "Universal Turing Machine" which was programmed to read
   instructions, as well as data, off the tape, thus giving rise
   to the idea of a general-purpose programmable computing
   device.  This idea still exists in modern computer design with
   low level microcode which directs the reading and decoding
   of higher level machine code instructions.

   A busy beaver is one kind of Turing Machine program.

   Dr. Hava Siegelmann of Technion reported in Science of 28
   Apr 1995 that she has found a mathematically rigorous class of
   machines, based on ideas from chaos theory and neural
   networks, that are more powerful than Turing Machines.  Sir
   Roger Penrose of Oxford University has argued that the brain
   can compute things that a Turing Machine cannot, which would
   mean that it would be impossible to create artificial
   intelligence.  Dr. Siegelmann's work suggests that this is
   true only for conventional computers and may not cover neural
   networks.

   See also Turing tar-pit, finite state machine.

   (1995-05-10)