baumhaus.digital/Studium Generale/Short History of the Learning Machine/Cogs, Steam, Algorithm/From Cogs to Concept
Strip away the brass gears, the steam, the punch cards — what's left in each of those machines is the same abstract thing: a precise, repeatable sequence of steps that turns some input into some output.
That sequence of steps is an algorithm. The machine is just one possible body for it to live in.