Turing's narrative could not have reached the public sphere, let alone become a political talking point, without significant academic groundwork. Scientific biographers and historians have provided the first vital building blocks for others to shape Turing into a distinct cultural presence. However, truly original secondary material is still scarce. 1 Surprisingly few volumes have been dedicated solely to studying Turing alone, of which most date from 1992 onwards. This is perhaps due to the fact that accounts of him and his primary documentation remained partially classified and scattered for at least twenty years due to the nature of his work and personal life. Other computer scientists with a more open public presence and a higher profile …show more content…
Although Turing developed unclassified projects elsewhere, the years 1939-43 are vital to understanding his work as a computer scientist. The British security services released information on Turing slowly, at their own deliberately inscrutable discretion. For an example of the problems posed, a full and detailed account of how Turing supervised the solving of the mathematical problems surrounding Enigma was produced ready for publication by A.H. Mahon in June 1945. It was not cleared for public access until long after it would have been revolutionary in securing Turing's reputation as a war hero, in 1999. 2 3 Likewise, government suppression meant that vital oral contributors to reconstructing Turing's narrative such as Tommy Flowers were effectively silenced until the late nineties. 4 Due to the chaotic, uneven nature of post-war disposal and the personal nature of many documents, there have been more practical problems with gathering material as well. It has taken a long time for evidence to be found and fully collaborated. It can still be reasonably assumed that everything that survived from Bletchley and Manchester has not yet been found. …show more content…
It is worth noting that Turing and his concepts first surprisingly cropped up in a mainstream piece of genre defining speculative science fiction relying on real research for ideas six years prior. As Andrew Hodges notes, Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick drew upon the concepts in On Computable Numbers and the idea of playing an “Imitation Game” with a virtual intelligence. They created a sinister exploration of the potential for an AI to deceive and kill in the film (later book) 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). 9 10
Alan Turing and Grace Hopper are considered two of the most famous pioneer in computer science, it’s because of their contribution in the past that mankind can achieve lots of great things and have a peaceful life as we know. Alan Turing is the person who invented the Turing Machine which is the hypothetical machine that every modern computer nowadays all base on. Grace Hopper is the one who developed the first compiler for computer programming language – a tool to translate human language into computer language. Even though Alan Turing and Grace Hopper come from a different country, have different background, they still have similarities in their life like education background and their career
Today, the Turing Bombe is not used by the military, yet the machine inspires and reminds of the importance of sciences as World War II was won with the help of the scientific community. Now, the machines are exposed in the British Museum and are part of history. Soldiers and scientific community fought against the Nazis. After World War II, Alan Turing continued to devote himself for his passion of sciences, cryptanalysis, and computers. For instance, Turing is known as the father-creator of computers as in 1941, he designed the Colossus computer (Notes). In addition, he is recognized as an important figure in the scientific community and contributed largely to everyone’s lives, as computers are indispensable in today’s generation.
The story took place in 1941 at Bletchley Park by the time of World War II. Alan Turing was working as a Mathematics professor in Cambridge University. He was an expert in solving the puzzles and he was hired by government to break the secret code, when Britain declared a war on Germany. Alan and other members formed as a team to break the secret code named as Enigma. Except Alan remaining members were breaking day to day codes they believe that this the only way can decode the secret codes. Mean while Alan working to prepare a
In 1925, the Germans decided that they wanted a better way to encrypt their messages for the Army and other militaries. They found the ENIGMA, a machine being produced by the Chiffriermaschinen Aktiengesellschaft Company for encrypting messages in a business setting. (Mowry, 1) The Germany Army got a hold of it and adapted it for their purposes. The machine contained a keyboard with all the letters of the alphabet hooked to three
There he earned his honors in Mathematics. In 1935 he was elected a fellow of the college by proving the Central Limit Theorem. In 1936, Turing reformulated Kurt Gödel’s results on the limits of proof and computation. He replaced Gödel’s complex formulations with simple hypothetical devices known to be as Turing Machines. This was all published in his paper called: "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem" (1936). Turing proved that a theoretical universal machine, later to be known as the ‘Universal Turing Machine”, would be capable of performing any mathematical computation if it were given an algorithm. To this day, Turing machines are a central subject of study. September of 1936, Turing attended Princeton University where he studied cryptology. 1939 Alan Turing received his PhD from Princeton, and returned to
Her brief life distinguishes herself as an important participant in the early history of modern computers, for she was the first to articulate the methodology of computer programming. She saw into the future of the Analytical Engine unlike many of the capable minds of her time. Though her life was short, Ada Lovelace anticipated by more than a 110 years most of what we think of as brand-new computing. Although her discoveries were prodigious, her work had little or no direct influence on computer science, for computer scientists in the 1940’s and 1950’s had rediscovered most of what she had written without any knowledge of her work. However, her life and work are of great historical interest and leaves a legacy from which many women may be inspired. Ada Lovelace, persevered and followed her passions despite the limitations placed upon her as a woman. She is a role model to look up to as someone not limited by the traditional roles women found themselves in. Her life exemplifies the fact that life is short and it should be lived
During World War II, Alan Turing is recruited by the government to help with discovering the secrets of Enigma. While in Bletchley Park, a top secret government building dedicated to cracking Enigma, the team of mathematicians work on breaking each code but Alan Turing works on making a machine capable of immediately breaking any code. However, doing so requires an enormous sum of money due to the equipment necessary. Finally realizing that the reason “Christopher”, the machine built to immediately crack Enigma codes, was not working was because it was searching for every word. He then programs it to search for only words that are used in each code. The problem in this was that attacks had to be avoided strategically as to keep the Nazis from realizing that Enigma had been cracked. Throughout the movie, moments from Alan Turing’s past are shown to explain his personality, feelings, and talent. At the end of the film, facts about what happened after the team of mathematicians solved enigma are shown before the last part, which consists of what happened after the government found out that Alan Turing was a homosexual. His friend that was once his coworker and fiancé, Joan Clarke comes to visit one last time. It is shown also shown in this scene that she is now happily engaged to another
Turing was recruited as a cryptanalyst at Bletchley Park as he was described as an “exceptional talent” and a genius. His interest in cryptanalysis and the development of modern technology led him to create the machine that eventually broke the German Enigma Code. During his time at Bletchley Park, a co-worker of Turing, Captain Jerry Roberts, once said that “without him we would have lost the war”. Turing’s work was said to have shortened the war by up to 4 years.
Dr. Winner known for his writings on science, technology and society explores computer revolution, its social and ethical issues in this chapter (6), making it an interesting read. As the title implies it highlights the myths1 anticipated when the computer revolution2 started. Even though the extract was written in the 1980s, it is extremely relevant even today.
During World War 2 many top mathematicians and problem solvers were recruited to decode Enigma. They ultimately created the machine called The Bombe. This machine is finds every single possible Enigma code and ultimately finds the right one. This machine helped save more than 2 years of the war, and possibly 14-17 million lives. It ultimately gave the Allies the greatest edge of the
Everyone has a passion, everyone has a purpose, but more importantly everyone has an impact. In the beginning of the 20th Century, there was a boy named Alan Turing who seemed like any other troublesome delinquent, but as he grew he became one of the most crucial tools for the British Military. Morten Tyldum directs, “The Imitation Game,” which is a piece of cinematography created to illustrate the period of time during WWII where the German use of the Enigma code, which is an encrypted form of communication, had not yet been solved. This mystery allowed Germans to communicate freely, without having to worry about other countries interfering.. The British force attempted to crack the code, but there were several obstacles that stood in their way that earned the enigma code, impossible to crack. The decryption of the Enigma code was such a daunting task primarily because there were millions upon millions of settings for the transmitting machine, and those attempting to understand had less than 24 hours to crack it, or else the cycle started over. The movie focuses primarily on the leader of the team that cracked the code, Alan Turing. It begins post World War II, in an effort to demonstrate how Turing’s sexual orientation lead to his depression and suicide, as well as to highlight that the life a genius man who saved millions of lives was never congratulated by anyone other than those who were already close to him.
Alan Turing is known as one of the creators of computer science. He has made many scientific contributions to the world of computers which included defining Turing machines, the Turing test, the Church-Turing thesis, and undecidability. Alan Turing is considered the father of modern computer science. In 1939-1940, he invented the electromechanical machine which was known as the Bombe. The Bombe was designed to breakdown Enigma quicker. Turing’s first major work was on computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungs problem, which was completed in 1936. This application turned out to be the birth of Turing machines. In 1950, he wrote Computer Machinery and Intelligence where he discusses the problem of artificial intelligence.
In 1881, a young engineer using punch cards reduces 10 years’ work to three months by producing the Hollerith Tabulating Machine and achieves his place in history as the father of modern automated computation. The company he finds will go on to become known as IBM (Marr, 2015).
World War 2 is where the field of Computer Science made its first leap out of the shadows of Mathematics. It was thanks to the military need to safely test new weapons of mass destruction with the use of computer simulations that computers got their first push. The military’s desire to encrypt information that a team of humans could not decipher in a reasonable amount of time also helped give rise to machines that could do more complex work than a single human and complete them in faster times than a team of humans. It was various world governments looking to save man power and resources that lead to the shift toward machines, that would one day be computers, working for us.
Alan Turing was a dedicated mathematician who devoted his lives works to developing computer knowledge, as we know it today. Alan was born in London, England on June 23, 1912. Alan soon began to attend a local school and his interest in the science fields arose. His teachers an others would try and make him concentrate on other fields such as History an English but his craving for knowledge of mathematics drove him the opposite way. Turing’s prosperous career in math started at King's College, Cambridge University in 1931. After graduation Alan moved on to Princeton University and that is where he explored his idea of a multi propose computer that used one’s and zero’s to describe