ALAN TURING

Code breaker, compute

programer
WHO WAS ALAN
TURING?

1912 Alan Mathison Turing born in Maida Vale, London
1934 Alan graduates with distinction in Mathematics from King's College, Cambridge.
1938 Alan goes to Princeton University in America to study mathematics and is awarded a PhD.
1939 September - Alan is asked to join the Government Codes and Ciphers School and arrives at Bletchley Park the day after war is
declared.
1940 With Gordon Welchman, Alan develops the Bombe to decipher the messages sent by the Germans using their Enigma machine.
1945 At the end of the war, Alan Turing is awarded the OBE for his wartime services.
1946 Alan publishes a paper with the first detailed design of a stored-program computer.
1950 Alan publishes the famous paper 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence' in which he develops the Turing Test.
1951 Alan is elected Fellow of the Royal Society, and also gives talks about Artificial Intelligence on the BBC.
1952 Alan is arrested for gross indecency. He loses his security clearance so he cannot work. He is offered chemical treatment instead
of going to prison. The treatment makes him very unwell.
1954 Alan dies in his home in Wilmslow, Cheshire, from poisoning. A half-eaten apple was found next to him laced with cyanide.
1986 A play, Breaking the Code, about Alan's life and work opens in the West End with Derek Jacobi playing Alan.
2009 Thousands of people sign a petition. The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown makes a public apology saying the treatment of Alan
Turing was "appalling".
Alan Turing is oftend called the founder of modern computing. He
solved the esiproblem, and defined computing form there on out.
He was a codebreaker in Bleachly Park, and invented the Enigam
machiene, which helped us to win the war.
He then went on to define what an AI needs to do, and create the
Turing Test, a standard still used today.
He helped co-create a computer in the %0s which became the
basis of all government secrutiy in the Cold war, and lead to the
creation of the first home computer.
He lives on in popular culure, recently being issues a royal
pardon, and beingt rhe subject of a numbe of plays, movies and
musicals.
NATURE OF INDIVIDUAL
Called the father of modern computing, for
his work on the Entscheidungsproblem, which was the idea that a machine could possibly
be created that could tell you the truth of a statement. Turing and Church worked together
to show that this was insolvable, as there needs to be a model of computation in order to
determine an answer, and unitised a Turing machine to do this.
Alan Turing can be considers a very significant individual. His work for Bletchley Park
originated partially as a responded to the obsolete nature of Bomba, the previous code
breaking machine, which became useless as the German code changed. The new
machine invented by Turning was called Bombe, though now is known as the Enigma
Machine. This was like nothing ever used beforehand, and completely altered the course
of the second World War
The Turing Test is still a benchmark that measures AI. That is, a machine that cannot be
distinguished from a human passes this test. This test has lead to the creation of
CAPTCHAs, or reverse Turing tests.
Worked on early model computer: Automatic Computing Engine (ACE), However, his
colleagues at NPL thought the engineering work too difficult to attempt, and a considerably
smaller machine was built, the Pilot Model ACE. With a clock speed of 1 MHz this was for
some time the fastest computer in the world. Computers deriving from Turing's original
design remained in use until about 1970 (including the Bendix G15, arguably the first
personal computer).
WIDTH OF IMPACT
Mathematics: He helped to disprove the Entscheidungsproblem. This has effected all of modern mathematics, and
changed 3 Centuries worth of mathematical thought, dating back to Gottfried Leibniz in the 17
th
Centaury.
War: His Enigma machine, by early 1942, the Bletchley Park cryptanalysts were decoding about 39,000
intercepted messages each month, which rose subsequently to more than 84,000 per month. Winston Churchill is
quotes as saying that he shortened the course of the War by at least two years.
He is known as the father of modern computing for a reason. Time Magazine states The fact remains that
everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a word-processing program, is working on an
incarnation of a Turing machine. when they gave their reason for including him as one of the 100 most influential
people of the 20
th
centaury. His turing machiene forms the basis for all modern computing, and his work is still felt
deeply in AI, and the Turning test is still a major benchmarck for any AI. Moreover, the reverse Turning test is
probabl;y knwkn to all of us in the form of the CAPICHA


Effected the entire war effort with the cracking of the enema code. Winnie C He shotedn the length of the wr by
two years. So he effected all soldiers and poilots and personell, as well as the civilan population
Poor probs effected mor,e as he sved them a lot a stuff witht he munitions factories, but his impact was most widely
felt in the acedemic community, where he was already famous beforee cracking the enigma code, becsue of his
fight with that German mathmeticamn


DEPTH OF IMAPCT
Alan Turing created the basis of all computer technology.
Without him, there would be no computers, and given that so
much of our society is based off conputing, thats an impact
that permates to this day, inall corners of the world.

The fact that he was attributed for ending the war can be seen
as having great depth, as it was a world war, so affede many
people, as well as changing the course of the war itself.
NATURE OF IMPACT-
How far:
Benifited not only progarmmer and other cryptographers
Benfited with AI

OTHER
Rep, symbolic/ iconic?
V. iconic, but was sceret
What does it revela?
Conetx of that germ dude. The first developemnt of computers.
The presser of ww1


WHAT WENT BEFORE,
WHAT CAME AFTER-
TURNING POINT?
Could be considered a turning point, as he completely defiend
the axioms of numbers. This is the basis of allcomputing that
has come after him.
Also a turing point in the war
Also a turinging point, in the creation of AI, which would not
have been possible without him
PART OF A TREND?
No. He diefed the trend .
Stored program concept- sarted a trend.
DEOS THE SIGNIFICANCE
OF EVENT CHANGE
ACCORDING TO THE TIME
SCALE?
Immediate: helepd win the war
Immediate recognition, as was awared an OBE in 1945.
Reflection later: shorteding wwar
Post-war.a lot kept secret, but thos ein the know thugh his work
vital.
Later: Founded modern computing
As computers become more vital to everyday life, his
importance inscreaes, as the father of computing
Utilsed in many capaigns for the acceptance of homosexulaity,
and his case perhaps becomes more poigniant as time passes,
especially in these more elgihgtend times.
HAVE THINGS HAPEPDN
SINCE THEN TAHT HAVE
AFFECTED JUDGEMNTS
ABOUT SIGNIFICANE
The importnace of computers in daily life now. Hes not just a
war winner, but is stil having relenvet impacts
Records relased about his war work, so we fully understand
what he did now.
The acceptence of homosexuasl in society.
Will become more relebent, as AI becomes more popular.

HAVE DIFFERNT TIMES
MADE DIFEFRNT
JUDGEMNETS
40s top secret
At the end of the war, Turing was made an officer of the Order
of the British Empire for his code-breaking work.
50s death and obscurity
80/90s recognition and commernation and demand fort
acknolagement
Recieevd royal pardon

WHY HAVE HISTORIANS
HAD DIFF
SIGNIFICANCE?
http://www.turing.org.uk/bio/part4.html


http://historysheroes.e2bn.org/hero/howviewed/91

GENDER AND HUMAN
LIBRE PDF
Alan Turing is important for much the opposite reason:
believing that logical form does in fact represent human intelligence
to a significant degree, he found a way to reify logical form in the most
profound way, giving birth to a thing that could by definition only follow
logical precepts. He said this thing could think, or would shortly, and gave
us what he said was a way to know whether it was thinking. How mistaken
he was about this is clear now, but the consequences of his mistake have
been widely underappreciated.



In recent years, Turing has become a relatively well-known
intellectual figure, due (at least) to his persecution for homosexuality and
his participation in the World War IIera codebreaking efforts associated
with the German machine known as Enigma.2 Novels, plays, and nonfiction
accounts of Turings life have saturated public awareness, but these
have focused principally on the apparent paradox of Turings devoted
service to British intelligence during World War II and his subsequent
prosecution by the British government for his sexual orientation, which
apparently led to his eventual suicide by the overdetermined and even
proleptic act of eating a poisoned apple.3 Turings contributions to the
development of computers are well known, but there may be more to the
connections between the various aspects of Turings life and thought than
has generally been understood.
BRIT
HTTP://WWW.BRITANNICA.
COM/TOPIC/609739/WEBSIT
ES
Turings ingenious Bombes kept the Allies supplied with
intelligence for the remainder of the war. By early 1942 the
Bletchley Park cryptanalysts were decoding about 39,000
intercepted messages each month, which rose subsequently to
more than 84,000 per month.

In 2009 British Prime Minister Gordon Brown publicly
apologized for Turings treatment by the justice system, and
four years later Queen Elizabeth II issued a formal pardon.
HTTP://WWW.LATIMES.COM
/BUSINESS/HILTZIK/LA-FI-
MH-ALAN-TURING-
20131226-STORY.HTML
The pardon is the product of years of campaigning by the
LGBT community, along with prominent scientists such as
Stephen Hawking. Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown in
September urged "this recognition of Alan's status as one of
Britain's most famous victims of homophobia (as) another step
towards equality, and long overdue."