Alan Turing: Man? Machine? Monster?
The Life and Works of Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing was born on the 23rd of June 1912 to Julius Mathison Turing and Ethel Sara Stoney. During his childhood he moved between Hastings and India where his Dad worked for the Civil Service.
Early Life
His Parents first enrolled him at St Michael's one day school. His teachers instantly noticed potential genius. He then moved to Sherbone School where he befriended a clever scholar Christopher Morcom. However Christopher died from poisoned milk and this incident destroyed Alan's Faith.
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Alan and The Enigma
Its 1940 and the Germans are wining the war. British Leaders know that if they can crack the "Impossible Code" then the advantage will be strongly with them. They bring in the best code breakers to try and break it. Everyone starts to work on it manually. Everyone that is except Turing. He begins to work on a machine called the "Bombe". The Government begin to lose patient with him. Eventually they shut his computer down. however they manage to convince the government to give them one more month. In one miraculous night Alan works out how to crack enigma. He knows that the Germans use two of the same words in every transmission: Hail Hitler. With this knowledge they can work out the code for every letter every day forever. Historians predict that this knocked over 2 years of the war.
The sad ending of Alan Turing
Alan had one big secret. He was gay. Back in 1950 this was illegal. The only options were to go to prison for two years(as a gay he would of been hurt and tortured in prison) or to take hormonal injections often to destroy these thoughts. Unsurprisingly he picked the latter. But six months into these treatments he could take no more. He killed himself by eating an apple laced with cyanide. He was given royal pardon in 2013.