Rizal Philippines
February 26, 2016
Alan Turings greatest triumph
I watched the movie "Imitation Game" at HBO last night. It was a story about Alan Turing, and a group of cryptographers to decode the German crypt code especially the enigma which they thought was unbreakable. It took a while and his superiors at British Intelligence was furious for not having decoded a single message, and having spent a hundred thousand pounds (a great sum of money) on the machine known as bombe. When they did, they could have averted a UBoat attack and saved hundreds of lives (including that of a colleagues brother) but Alan did not allow that. Why - the Germans would conclude that the enigma code has been broken and would change it. Alan there is a difference between what is right and what is logical. What is logical is to have statistically accepted number of hits and misses so that the Germans would not suspect that they have been found out. Truly brilliant.
The movie got 8 Oscar nominations
It was remarked on the movie that Alan discovery was prelude to the modern day computer. At the movie, they focused on the hardware. Later, postwar, Alan in his dissertation proposed software - programming. It was said, Von Nuemann though to be the father of computers, learned from Alan
While Turing was depressed as he was about to be prosecuted as homosexual (things have changed a lot) he was reassured by a former fiancee that many cities and many other things still exist because of Alan. Leaders are responsible for many things. (like the computer's coming to be)
