Accomplishments Of Alan Turing

     The Turing Test has had a rich history since its creation by Alan Turing. But first of all, who was Alan Turing? As Whitby notes Alan Turing was a superb British mathematician. During World War II Turing worked in secrecy for the British military to break the German military codes together with some other scientists using some machines that had some characteristics of the modern computers.(12) After the War, a machine was built in Manchester from which “all modern computers are descended”.(12) In 1948, Alan Turing was writing programs for this machine and was also writing the paper “Computing machinery and intelligence”, published in 1950, from which the concept of the Turing Test was derived later on. (Whitby 13).

Along with Carr using the extrinsic truth, he also made sure to include the intrinsic aspect to each example. The digital computer spoken of in the section wasn’t invented at the time, therefore Turing was only but assuming. Carr said in his article that Alan Turing proved the functions of the computer, but gives no details into how he proved it.

Turing, a physicalist, believed that artificial intelligence could be achieved in the future. Turing argued that the mind was merely due to the physical aspects of the brain and so a machine could one day be created that has a mind of its own, i.e. artificial intelligence. He created a test called the Turing Test to determine whether a machine has artificial intelligence. In the Turing Test, an interrogator asks two subjects a series of questions. One of the subjects is a person, the other is the computer. The goal is for the person to imitate a computer and the computer to imitate the person. If the interrogator is fooled into thinking that the computer is the human then the computer, according to Turing, is concluded to have the ability to think and thus, have a mind. Turing argued that machines passing the Turing Test were sufficient for ascribing thought.

During World War II, the Germans used a type of code that is almost impossible to break. They used this code to communicate between each other and would get directions of where to go and also state where their locations are through that code. What made that code unique was the way that they used it. The way their code worked would be that someone would write a letter in a machine, and then the machine would print a coded version of the message. But that was not the worst part of it. At the end of every day, they would change the key to the messages, all at the same time in a synchronized manner. The way that the Enigma machine was built made it even more complicated to understand. “There are approximately 150,000,000,000,000 - that is, 150 million million - possible combination” (Claire Ellis “Exploring the Enigma”). Alan Turing started working in a

Although the effect of Turing’s contribution cannot be quantifiable in the Battle of the Atlantic or even the war in general, it is agreeable that with Ultra, the Allies had an upper hand in winning the war. The Allies essentially knew what the Germans were thinking, their ways, actions, and habits. This provided tremendous amounts of information for the Allies, which then benefited their strategies of approaching the

“the keyboard for inputting letters, the scrambler unit for encrypting the letters and the lamp board for displaying the enciphered letters” (Lendl). In order to break the Enigma Machine, the code breakers had to find the daily settings that the German used and understand them. However, it is important to know that Polish cryptographers already broke the Enigma machine in 1932 as Marian Rejewski reconstructed a replica of the Enigma i.e. Bomba machine. However, Turing used Rejewski’s ideas and improved the bombe machine so that the machine could go through all the possible combinations of the Enigma rapidly (Lendl). The polish Bomba inspired Alan Turing for the construction of his own Bombe machine. The Bombe machine was crucial for the breaking of Enigma’s signals. This machine is not considered as a computer and does not perform calculation, but was designed “to carry out a systematic search to determine the following components of an Enigma key: the rotor order, the ‘rotor core starting positions’, and some of the ‘steckers’” (Carter). Due to the work of the Bletchley Park codebreakers, the United Kingdom had access to the German communications and could predict future naval attacks, this allowed the prevention of several

This meant that his initial assumption was wrong and that all the other deductions were also wrong. If he continued using this system he would have to try all of this process with all the remaining 25 letters of the board and if these were all wrong, he would have to change the rotor position one place. This system would eventually work but it would take months to decipher the setting for one day and the germans changed their settings everyday. Consequently, all the effort would be useless. From all of this, Alan Turing discovered that you could go through all of this process and determine which of the deductions were wrong with electrical current.

“We can see only a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.” Alan Turing, a forgotten hero, said this when challenged with the prospect of technology that could think for itself. This figure hidden in the shadows of history has impacted every aspect  of society. Because of his accomplishments in the realm of computing, the vast majority of the population has handled an electronic device. Turing, truly a catalyst for social change, who society tried to bury because of his homosexuality, a crime of gross indecency in the United Kingdom until 1967 is responsible for the electronic-reliant population the majority of humanity lives in today (“Alan Turing: Creator of modern computing”).

The movie, The Imitation Game, follows the story of a remarkable and brilliant English mathematician, named Alan Turing, who helped win World War II, all the while hiding aspects of his life to succeed. In 1939, during World War II, Germany used a machine called Enigma which sent encrypted radio messages with military instructions, it was primarily used to sink English convoy and passenger ships. During this time, Turing is hired by the commander of the Royal Navy with the task of decoding the encrypted messages. This mission is deemed impossible, however with his strong determination, Alan devises a plan to construct a machine to beat the “crooked hand of death”. After two long, hard years, Alan, with the assistance of five other brilliant

In the movie Alan Turing is a genius that single handily built a machine to help decipher Nazi

“With German invasion imminent in 1939, the Poles opted to share their secrets with the British, and Britain's Government Code and Cipher School (also known as GC&CS) Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, became the centre for Allied efforts to keep up with dramatic war-induced changes in Enigma output.” (Andrew Lycett, BBC.co.uk) If the Allies had access to decoded German communication, then they would have the upper hand. The Germans were so confident in the Enigma code that they used it to encrypt most all of their messages during the war. Since it was a difficult and sensitive task, Bletchley Park needed Britain’s best minds to work together. “He (Alan Turing) was already working part-time for the British Government’s Code and Cypher School before the Second World War broke out. In 1939, Turing took up a full-time role at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire-” (Imperial War Museums). Alan Turing was a very intelligent mathematician and at this point, he was proving this to many others. His genius was exactly what this problem needed. After Britain declared war on Germany, they immediately sent people to work on cracking the Enigma. It was believed to be an impossible task, and yet they put their best efforts into working on it with the help of

William perfected this by turning it into something called a diagonal board. Finally, Alex finalized this invention and it because a sort of cabinet, which they called The Bombe. This invention later became known as the Turing-Welchman Bombe.

His scientific work has allowed for a much broader understanding of how the world works and made some very useful inventions possible.

Alan Turing was a famous British mathematician and computer scientist who was determined to prove that machines at some point (possibly sometime in the future) would be able to surpass humans in intelligence levels. In order to prove this true, he created what became to be known as, “The Turing Test.” This test was basically to see if a computer could trick a person into believing that it was human. It would be asked a series of questions, which would be compared to responses of the human. It was designed so that one could judge the intelligence level of the computers’ responses. Turing believed that if a human could not tell the difference between another human and a computer, then it served as proof that a computer is equally intelligent as a human. Due to a large

He cracked the Enigma’s codes by using a code deciphering machine called "Bombe". The film was moderately accurate as there were a few exaggerated points and errors such as what the machine was called. Despite the flaws, this film was a good one. Turing is seen as a war-hero even up to this day. Turing has impacted the world on a large scale as if it was not for him discovering the concept of computer science, our technology would not have been as advanced as it is