IEEE Computer: Alan Turing at Bletchley Park

Computer's multimedia editor Charles Severance visits Bletchley Park to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Alan Turing's birth. Turing's ground-breaking work in the 1940s continues to have an impact on computer science as we know it. The Turing test, Turing machine, Turing completeness, and Church-Turing computability bear his name in acknowledgment of his early breakthroughs and influence. In the video, we see the German Enigma machine used to encrypt messages, and the BOMBE mechanical computing system that was designed by Alan Turing to crack the Enigma code. We also see the first electronic tube/valve-based computer called the Colossus that was built to break the more sophisticated Lorenz SZ42 encryption used for Hitler's strategic messages during World War II. We see and hear both the BOMBE and Colossus running as if they were in production doing code-breaking during the war.
For a podcast of the associated column, please see • Computing Conversation...
This video is from the Computing Conversations column in IEEE Computer's June 2012 issue: opac.ieeecomputersociety.org/o.... Visit Computer: www.computer.org/computer

[@allendharmonica]

Thank you Charles Severance and Coursera! =D

[@aarjith2580]

wow! an 8-year-old comment!!

[@miladirani4313]

How much is hard learning of this machine and then cracking the enigma with this, respect for alan turing he was really genius

[@RoseSharon7777]

Welchman was the bigger brain of all.

[@railwaymechanicalengineer4587]

@@RoseSharon7777You obviously don't know half the story about Turing. Enigma was only the beginning. "Tunnie" a German digitised coding system effectively replaced Enigma mid WW2, & it was Turing who unravelled that !

[@MarcAlier]

Great video Chuck. We will use it on our history of computing courses at UPC. (I was also glad to see Joel, I did not know about his current role at Betchley Park)

[@harrycain5912]

Fascinating! I love learning about the world wars.

[@webofstories]

Fantastic insight into the goings on at Bletchley Park and Alan Turing's involvement!

[@Sorgoni1]

Estoy viendo este video como parte del curso que estoy tomando en Coursera desde ayer. Me parece excelente.

[@ChenTengDaAsian]

Yes, this video from Charles Severance at Coursera! :-)

[@RoseSharon7777]

Being that I never progressed past Algebra, I may have been selected to clean the toilets at Blechley Park.

[@granskare]

I used to operate IBM sorting machines which may be related to Mr Flowers had.

[@andrewrixon2347]

In 1988 I did my first course with, what was then, British Telecom, (formally GPO or Post Office Telecommunication’s) at Bletchley Park for 3 weeks. It was, to me then, an old country estate albeit very run down. I had no knowledge of its past or history then. We had an exercise whereby we had to track/locate buried cables and we were finding cables underground that the instructors knew nothing about ! Makes sense now. National Air Traffic Services also had a presence there at the time training new Air Traffic Controllers. You can see Tommy Flowers influence albeit the look/feel of old Strowger telephone routing equipment. A lot of this is still in place, albeit dead, in some telephone exchanges.

[@HolyGwakamoley]

Went here right after "The imitation game"

[@philparr2724]

I hope that you have bought some books and read the real history, not the shit history that the film 'The Imitation Game' portrays,

[@wilmadeluna7690]

he had one ticket to smash town but he didnt go

[@molotovtheholy2292]

@@philparr2724 the film isn’t about “truth”, but more about inspiration. That’s how art works. I know that most of the film (compares to the real story) is “bullshit”. But it is a good film, I enjoy watching it, inspire from it and I know that many people are like that too. I study computer science btw.

[@DAVIDSDIEGO]

Great video! I just recently watched documentary "Codebreaker"...

[@iansalter9040]

Great doco

[@granskare]

I wish I had some of these tubes now :)

[@fredyellowsnow7492]

Unbelievably, there are still accounts of the Battle of Britain that were written by historians well after the existence of ULTRA became known, which give no credit or even mention of the incredible work done at Bletchley Park. Work which helped to avoid disaster during the BoB, because Dowding, being a recipient of ULTRA, knew what was about to happen and could marshal his forces accordingly. Dowding's contemporaries weren't privy to the ULTRA information and went about slagging their boss off. Yes, I'm talking about Park and Mallory.

[@johndrum6613]

May I comment again. Read the book 'PROF ' written by AT's nephew Sir John Dermot Turing. Remarkable read.

[@738polarbear]

Just thinl ,one bad soldered connection and it goes wrong . the mind,Turing's, that conceived this machine is beyond genius. I bought a CURTA mechanical calculator ,that too is genius .

[@adrius42]

Coursera student frantically trying to catch up after an Internet free vacation!!

[@allanegleston4931]

definatly a crosover of tech of the time .( radio, electronics , valves (tubes in usa, thats all they had ) relays and brittish post office tech . i also thought i heard mention a general ismay,? was that the same one who owned white star line ?

[@herauthon]

it does have latch and tape memory.. ; is that also called "Havard" model.. or is that a bad injection ?

[@TheHolyMongolEmpire]

Fucking fascinating. World war 2 sucked but without it we would probably just be getting the apple 2 computer now.

[@gdanio89]

4:54 I always thought that just means a bomb. Honestly i never meet desert called bomba, rather something with many calories may be called a calloric bomb.

[@LemonadetvYT]

Oh so this is how the processor from my pc comes from huh okok

[@Time-cc2qb]

Ehe

[@nmp2576]

That's right, Alan Turing cannot have cracked Enigma without the help of three Polish mathematicians: Zygalski, Rejewski and Rozycki

[@MiguelGo_2]

whats is the name of the song?

[@garyleigh8976]

Derp

[@ashishranjan5899]

is this original machine

[@_____7704]

8kW @ 230V = 34 Amps!

[@icantfindausernamehe]

I read Turing came up with the idea of the Turing machine whilst lying down in a meadow field. Rather poo-poos the idea of the need for people to return to the office and firmly shows that the best work is done outside the office.

[@Lioobayoyo]

very interesting video, apart from the sound quality and mixing...

[@kev897]

Fantastic video, brilliant very educational and explained in a way that made it very interesting. But I have to ask something which could be controversial for some if its taken the wrong way. For the life in me I do not understand why Alan Turing and his contributed has been elevated so much. Yes he made a good contribution But the contributions of others like Tommy flowers and Bill Tutt's where massively more significant. In this discussion its pointed out to us how it was the contributions of others, and what they discovered and worked out, that actually made collosus work. Enigma itself was not the key to anything, It was the intercept and breaking of lorenz, essentially the command and control communication link between all the nazi headquarters across Europe which was the big thing and without Tommy flowers and Tutt then there would have been nothing, they would never have been broken. Look at Rommel, he is lauded as a genius. But all along, Rommel had visibility of all of the plans of the British generals that opposed him. So he could prepare in advance for any attack and exploit any weak areas in Brit lines. All because the actions of a yank colonel, an observer given way too much access to plans which he broadcast every day back to the USA. The italians having broken into his safe and copied the yank codes. Rommel was no genius at all. This was one of those moments in history when the right people with the right imagination and intelligence came together all at the right time. Bit like the Beatles manager deciding not to walk past that record shop, which led to the guy in the shop introducing him to George martin. The coming together of Martin, the beatles, made all their magic happen. The pictures of Tutt and flowers should be on our 20 quid notes too. Where is the bust of tommy flowers? Where is the Tutt award for anything?

[@vononovo]

Another guy from coursera course

[@xyg6578]

Turing人类的光辉。

[@RickFico]

Yes, as I am as well!

[@rogiansante]

I am also watching this video as part of the Internet History, Technology and Security I am taking at Coursera. My first language is not english. I turned on "automatic captions - english" to read the words they were saying and it is unbelievable the things captions are saying, having nothing to do with the speech. I read words like "orgasmic" and "african vegans" and "boys" instead "board" and things like that all the time, and the whole automatic English caption is just not good.

[@nikijacobs2199]

I think sallymaggiepotty is an internet troll.

[@galipan24]

So he used a mathematical proof by contradiction to prove that Turing Machines can be used to solve any computable problem? Yeah, such bollocks. Stop spamming your comment. It's pathetic.

[@ny007ny]

Thumbs up if you came here from Coursera!

[@738polarbear]

I just read some comments about Alan Turing further down . Just pure ,evil,jealous spite . The man was a genius and it was NOT the imaginary 3 Poles that cracked Enigma. Sure they got the machine and tried their best but it was Turing and his team that brought it to fruition . Why do these spiteful,malicious people try to minimize Turing's achievements.?

[@TheLolapuff]

Because the RW liars like to disparage a gay man who was a genius.

[@ibuprofenPill]

His eyebrows are out of control.

[@douglaskay9959]

Before the war the Germans sent a machine to France but they were not interested so one was sent to Poland and they brought one to England.

[@hit.rcreation4606]

After imitation game

[@angelapearce8888]

Computers were invented by Charles Babbage in 1824. The Enigma Code Machine was decrypted by three Polish men in 1932 and they gave the Enigma machine and their code book to the British in 1939. The British were able to read all German military messages from 1939. Therefore Alan Turing was a fraud, whose handler Jack Good at Bletchley Park said, "Alan's only contribution was to claim that from a contradiction, one can deduce everything." Alan couldn't decrypt anything with his theory.

[@johndrum6613]

Dear Angla, read you comment with great interest. Nobody in the film noticed that the BOMBE is in fact a copy of the Babbage Difference Engine and the Collossos was a fair copy of the Babbage "Store". Further that original computer programmer Lovalce was in fact female and the niece of Lord Byron the Poet.

[@xenon53827]

It's terrible when someone does 2 minutes internet research and comes up wanting. The Polish gave the British the means to decipher the code. When the war started, the code was changed and strengthened and could no longer be deciphered, thus the need to build the bombe. Then along came Lorentz who's factory had made 24 thousand extra code wheels by mistake and had the bright idea of flogging the German high command machines with 12 of them in each. Thus the need for Colossus. "Thy home is where thy mouth is" Angela…

[@chilli2508]

Thumbs up if you had a hard time understanding most of this because of their accent. :D

[@sallymaggiespotty]

Sorry to crash the party, but the Nazis knew everything about the workings at Blechley Park from it's inception till it's final days after the war.Every detail of every job of every worker there was common knowledge to those in Berlin.The Nazis had far superior computers to the British and therefore the efforts at Blechley were merely ignored and tolerated as a simple nuisance.Blechley Park is a good war story, but in fact had no influence on the outcome of the war in any way whatsoever.Precisely why the unsuccessful units were thrown down the shafts of coal mines after the war to hide the shame and total disgrace of the failure of any accomplishment of all their fruitless efforts and reason for Alan Turing's later suicide.

[@fraz6354]

Thats the biggest load of bullshit I'v ever read

[@greko1102]

Shut up u NAZY jerk!!!

[@nikijacobs2199]

sallymaggiespotty I'm pretty sure that the claim that Alan Turing committed suicide in response to his forced chemical castration for being homosexual is much more believable than your explanation.

[@brianmosse]

+sallymaggiespotty Silly person, but as long as you are happy in your basement, I Guess you are harmless .

[@philparr2724]

Moron

[@angelapearce8888]

Computers were invented by Charles Babbage in 1824. The Enigma Code Machine was decrypted by three Polish men in 1932 and they gave the Enigma machine and their code book to the British in 1939. The British were able to read all German military messages from 1939. Therefore Alan Turing was a fraud, whose handler Jack Good at Bletchley Park said, "Alan's only contribution was to claim that from a contradiction, one can deduce everything." Alan couldn't decrypt anything with his theory.

[@xenon53827]

You put the same wrong comment twice? Nuff said...