Alan Turing: Breaking The Unbreakable Code

A. Attention Getter: How many people in this room own or have owned an IPod, IPhone, or IPad? Isn’t astounding how one man’s vision and innovation gave us all devices that have made the world today more connected than it’s ever been? Devices we NOW can’t imagine leaving behind when we walk out the front door in the morning. Whether it’s listening to music in your bedroom, reading the news on the train ride to work, checking your email at home or even sitting in a waiting room watching Netflix. It’s hard to deny the influence and impact that Steve Jobs has had on modern culture.

Currently, computers are used for everything in life. For example, from researching for a large essay project to playing video games with friends. “From the outset, computers were weighed for both military and commercial significance, and hence they straddled the very institutional boundaries that central to this study. It is also significant that computers became valuable research instruments in nearly all disciplines.” (Akera, 2). The first digital computer was constructed in 1946 by John Mauchly, a professor, and Presper Eckert, an inventor. “They met by chance in 1941 at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Engineering. They soon developed a revolutionary vision: to use electricity as a means of computing--in other words, to make electricity "think."” (McCartney, 1). They were ignored by their colleagues, but in 1943 they were becoming more well known and was funded by the U.S Army. The U.S Army was seeking for a contraption that can quickly calculate ballistic missile trajectories in wartime Europe and Africa (McCartney, 1). John Mauchly and Presper Eckert led a team that constructed the computer that occupied 1,800 square feet and weighed thirty tons. They named the large computer, ENIAC, Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. The process of building this machine was not an effortless task, Mauchly and Presper and their team had to overcome many problems

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

5 remarkable British scientists had gotten their hands on an actual Enigma machine smuggled out of Berlin. They had put tremendous effort into decoding the Nazi's messages by using their cryptanalytic abilities but had failed because of the lack of information on the machine's

“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

The Man Who Changed Technology as We Know It. Given the task of conceptualizing a man who truly changed the realm of technology as we know it today, my mind secludes one person. Consequently, that person is Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer, now known simply as Apple. For this rhetorical analysis, I will be using three biographies/profiles about Jobs including “The Real Genius of Steve Jobs” by Malcolm Gladwell with The New Yorker (June 19, 2017), “Jobs’ Biography; Thoughts on Life, Death, and Apple” from NPR (October 25, 2011), and “Steve Jobs” from Biography.com (April 28, 2017).

The bitten apple on the backs of devices seen almost everywhere had its start roughly 40 years ago. Apple Computer, Inc. was formed by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs on the first of April in 1976. That day changed America’s dependence on technology forever. The popularity of personal computers and mobile devices has undoubtedly increased year by year. Social interaction has changed completely within American society with the introduction of networking and other methods of electronic communication. The wide range of information made available through the internet and accessible devices built a ‘library’ of material for anyone to use. The age of the internet has changed American lives, for better or for worse.

Einstein sent a letter to President Roosevelt urging the development of an atomic research program in 1939. Roosevelt saw neither the necessity or the utility for the project, but agreed to proceed slowly. The American effort to design and build an Atomic bomb received it’s code name, in late

An essay on the article “Steve Jobs: An Overrated Death - He Did Not Invent a Thing” by C.J. Thomson, 2011

“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

Back in 1970s, computers were very complex, had many chips, and hard to come by. This all changed in 1975, when Wozniak tested the Apple I’s prototype. This computer had less chips than other leading brands and was able to, for the first time in history, display a few letters on a screen. His acquaintance, Steve Jobs, persuaded him to sell it, and within the next year, the

The old English proverb, Aesop for Children, tells the story of a father who charges his sons to break a bundle of sticks one by one. They easily do so. Then he charges them to break the united bundle of sticks. None come close. This is a proverb demonstrating the strength in unity and coordination. This is a proverb an American engineer and inventor largely upheld throughout the course of his life’s accomplishments. Douglas Engelbart, largely known as the inventor of the mouse, affected the history of computing technology in a much deeper manner. Rather a chronological account of Engelbart’s entire life, this research paper analyzes his greatest accomplishments in a chronological order that directly supported the increased coordination of user’s efforts. Douglas Engelbart transcended the limits of computing technology by aligning human minds with computing systems through his collaborative user interface scheme.

When electronic digital personal computers were initially unveiled and introduced to the technological innovation, industry four decades ago, not one person

Apple has always been something of a trendsetter in the tech space. Its product history since Steve Jobs’s return in 1997 gives us a solid list of examples to choose from, from its very first iPod, to Apple’s PowerBook (and later MacBook) lines, to the iPhone and the iPad. Apple’s history is dominated by products that existed before Apple had a crack at them - but it was Apple who simplified them, made them appealing on a much wider scale, and ultimately made them objects of desire for the masses.

Morten Tyldum, the director of the film, explains that what caused him taking up on this project was the fact that “[Alan] did all these amazing things, and he’s in the shadows of history. It’s all because he has this shameful ending as a gay man, where he’s ridiculed and his work suffered” (Castillo, Monica). If it were not for Turing, laptops, ipads, and other forms of technology would not have existed without the concept of computer science, and it definitely would not have been as advanced as it is today. On a side note, Alan Turing had cracked the Enigma with the help of another mathematician, Gordan Welchman, but cracked Germany’s naval Enigma single handedly (Hodges, Andrew). In effect, this shortened the war by two years, which in turn saved millions of people’s