During the Second World War, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking centre. For a time he was head of Hut 8, the section responsible for German navalcryptanalysis. He devised a number of techniques for breaking Germanciphers, including the method of thebombe, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine. After the war he worked at the National Physical Laboratory, where he created one of the first designs for a stored-program computer, the ACE.
His late life was full of controversy- sad and interesting how different and repressed life was back then.
What is the source of your information? This is a good start, but there's more to be said about what his specific contribution was. Also, what about the Turing Test?
ReplyDeleteAccording to Wikipedia, the Turing test is a proposal for a test of a machine's ability to demonstrate intelligence. From the way I understand it, there are three, isolated participants in the test- a person, a computer and a judge. The judge engages in conversation with both the computer and the person, without knowing which is which. He or she must then determine which is the computer and which is the human. If the judge cannot differentiate the human from the machine, then the computer has passed the test.
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