I hadn’t, but I’m glad you asked (thanks!). This was fun to research, not only because it involves an interesting artifact from the early days of computers, but also because it shares a concept with Bandersnatch, the Netflix choose-your-own-ending movie!
TUTAC stands for “TUTorial Automatic Computer,” a device that existed only on paper, in the pages of a very old book — one of the very first of its kind: Basic Computer Programming by Theodore Scott.
The book sought to illustrate how a computer worked at its most fundamental level by providing concrete examples you’d work through by paging from section to section; each conceptual operation presenting one or more branches that would lead you to different parts of the book — to different “addresses” within the conceptual CPU — depending on what you were doing.
It was, in a way, like a choose-your-own-path adventure game — or
The book is now in the public domain; you can see a PDF here.
There’s an excellent write-up of TUTAC and several other “Computers that never were” in an eponymous article here. That article even lists some emulators you can run to bring TUTAC to life!
Lots more info here, too: https://www.google.com/search?q=tutac+computer
Thanks for the question! That was fun to learn!
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This is the book that told me I could understand computers, back in 1973. What I remember is *two* big, thick volumes. This book is the first one. The second volume had some more advanced machine level stuff and then delved into higher-level programming with a section on COBOL and a section on FORTRAN.