Compare it to quantum computation, where people were avidly researching it and coming up with algorithms decades before even toy quantum computers showed up in cutting-edge labs.
My understanding of the history is that everyone believed the extended Church-Turing thesis until someone noticed that the (already established) theory of quantum mechanics contradicted it.
I meant “apply” in the sense that one applies a mathematical model to a phenomenon. Specifically, it was implicitly assumed the the notion of polynomial time captured what was actually possible to compute in polynomial time.
My understanding of the history is that everyone believed the extended Church-Turing thesis until someone noticed that the (already established) theory of quantum mechanics contradicted it.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone invoke the extended Church-Turing thesis by either name or substance before quantum computing came around.
People were talking about P-time before quantum computing and implicitly assuming that it applied to any computer they could build.
I don’t see how one would apply “P-time” to “any computer they could build”.
I meant “apply” in the sense that one applies a mathematical model to a phenomenon. Specifically, it was implicitly assumed the the notion of polynomial time captured what was actually possible to compute in polynomial time.