Daniel Barnes Section 8 Group 2 Turing part 2

A clip from the movie "The Imitation Game"

Portrays Turing's quirky personality.

Alan Turing took part as a key proponent in breaking the German Enigma Code during WWII.  He joined a team of experts who worked at Bletchley Park with the GC&CS, the British code breaking organization.  Turing was once again somewhat out casted by his colleagues because they found him to be eccentric. 

            He eventually designed The Bombe.  It was an electromechanical device that was able to decipher German messages encrypted through the use of their Enigma Machine.  Turing went on to  contribute to several crypto graphical developments throughout the war. 

            While a Bletchley Park, Turing took part in several endurance marathons.  It has been noted that he occasionally ran the 40-mile trip from where he worked to London when he was needed for meetings.  His times were comparable to those of world-class marathon runners. 

            They began work march 18, 1940 and by late 1941 were becoming frustrated with the lack of financial backing they were receiving from the British government.  On October 28 they wrote a letter directly to Winston Churchill explaining their situation.  They mentioned how underfunded they were, and tried to prove how valuable their assistance would be to the war effort.

            After the war, Turing worked on designing machines that would be the framework for the design of modern computers.  He believed that computers were capable of being programmed so intelligently that they could be considered intelligent. 

            My final blog post will be the most philosophical of them all.  In it, I will address the idea of artificial intelligence.  I will detail Turing’s views on it, and then I will give my opinion on whether or not I believe artificial intelligence exists or will exist.  I will examine the Turing Test, and see if it still holds up to the more advanced computers of modern times.