I often write articles about anniversaries, some sad, some happy and some just downright confounding. This story falls within the bounds of the latter. In statistics, a confounding variable is defined as “an extraneous variable in a statistical model that correlates (directly or inversely) with both the dependent variable and the independent variable.” Sixty years ago this month, one of the most brilliant variables to ever draw breath removed himself from the equation. His name was Alan Turing and if you’ve never heard of him before, prepare to be amazed.
Rather than solely focusing on the date of his death, let’s start with his birth, June 12, 1912, 102 years ago this week. Alan Mathison Turing was a British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, computer scientist and most unlikely war hero. Many consider him to be the father of computer science and artificial intelligence. He was the first to marry the concepts of “algorithm” and “computation” together in his “Turing machine,” which is considered to be the first practical model of a general purpose computer.
During World War II, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, Britain’s code breaking center. For a time he was head of “Hut 8,” the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. In short, he was England’s master code breaker. He devised a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers, including the method of the “bombe,” an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the formidable Enigma machine, the cypher used by Nazi Germany to secure its military communications. His code breaking prowess enabled the Allies to defeat the Italians in the Mediterranean, beat back the Germans in Africa and evade devastating enemy submarines in the Atlantic.
While at Bletchley Park, Turing gained a reputation for eccentricity. His colleagues called him “Prof” and his treatise on the Enigma machine was known as “The Prof’s Book.” Like clockwork, every June 1st, Turing would get a severe attack of hay fever. As a result, he rode a bike to the office every day wearing a bulky military gas mask to keep the pollen off. To add to the strange spectacle, the bike’s chain would come off at regular intervals. Instead of having the bike fixed, Alan would count the number of times the pedals went round, jumping off just in time to adjust the chain by hand. Once safely in the office, Turing chained his coffee mug to the radiator pipes to prevent it from being stolen.
While working at Bletchley, Turing, a talented long-distance runner, occasionally ran the 40 mile route to London when he was needed for high-level meetings. His recorded times would place him among the world-class marathon runners of today. Turing’s eccentricities were overlooked because his “mad” code breaking skills helped the Allies outfox the Nazis, his “rad” theories laid the foundation for the computer age, and his “bad” work on artificial intelligence fueled the debate over whether machines can think independently to this very day. Even before the war, Turing was formulating ideas that would define modern computing. These ideas would mature into a fascination with artificial intelligence and the notion that machines could someday outperform the minds of man. At war’s end, Turing went to work programming some of the world’s first computers.
On February 19, 1946 Turing presented a paper to the NPL Executive Committee, detailing the first reasonably complete design of a stored-program computer. However, because of the strict and long-lasting secrecy surrounding his wartime work, he was prohibited from explaining that his ideas could be implemented in an electronic device. Others, not bound by the same rules of secrecy but aware of Turing’s work, were quick to put forth Turing’s theories and claim them as their own. Seems that intrigue, accusations and the supposed misappropriation of intellectual property in the world of computers can be traced back to its earliest days.
At the invitation of John R. Womersley, superintendent of the Mathematics Division, Turing went to work at Britain’s National Physical Laboratory. While there from 1945 to 1947, he designed the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE), one of the first stored-program computers. Turing’s technical design, known as the “Proposed Electronic Calculator,” was the product of his 1936 theoretical paper “On Computable Numbers” combined with his wartime experience with the Colossus computers that had broken the German military codes.
Turing described his idea as a “universal computing machine,” but it is now known as the Universal Turing machine. The Turing machine outlined the idea that it could outperform the tasks of any other computation machine, man-made or organic. In plain speak, the Turing machine was provably capable of computing anything that is computable. For the first time ever, Alan Turing proved that a machine could be programed to think independently.
In 1948 Turing was appointed “Reader” in the Mathematics Department at the University of Manchester, where he was instrumental in the development of the Manchester computers. It was in that year that Turing forever cemented his place in the hearts and minds of modern day gamers by writing the world’s first game program for a computer. The program was so advanced that a computer to play it on did not yet exist. Did I mention that he was way ahead of his time? The “Turbochamp” was a program designed to play a game of chess between a human and a machine. It did not work very well, but it did work. In his spare time, Alan became interested in mathematical biology. It was during this period that Turing designed the software for the world’s first stored-program computer — the Manchester Mark 1.
Turing worked from 1952 until his death in 1954 on mathematical biology, specifically morphogenesis. Morphogenesis is defined as “the biological process that causes an organism to develop its shape.” Turing’s interest in the field was number based and deeply rooted in statistical logic. He published one paper on the subject in 1952, putting forth the Turing hypothesis of pattern formation. He used “reaction-diffusion equations which are central to the field of pattern formation.” Think “Computer meets paint-by-number” and you’ve pretty much got it. Turing’s later papers went unpublished until 1992 when the “Collected Works of A.M. Turing” was published — a volume that quickly became known as the Bible in this field.
So, aside from his applied genius to the earliest days of the computer field, why is Alan Turing so revered by young historians today? Alan Turing was gay, and 1950s Britain punished the mathematician’s sexuality with a criminal conviction, intrusive surveillance and hormone treatment meant to extinguish his sex drive. Because of all this, on June 8, 1954, six decades ago this month, Alan Turing slipped quietly into bed and took one final bite of the apple — an apple laced with cyanide. The partially eaten fruit was found inches away from his dead body the next day by his cleaning lady. And what was the eccentric Turing’s favorite movie? Walt Disney’s 1937 classic, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Furthermore, what is the symbol representing one of the most popular brands of computers today? An apple….with a bite taken out of it.
Next Week: Part 2: “The life and death of Alan Turing.”
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
