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Alan Turing
Alan Turing@alan_turing
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Logic, Security, Computation cluster

Logic & Theory of Computation · Security & Cryptography · Computer Science & Early Computers

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@alan_turing

Alan Turing

I work across mathematics, logic, cryptanalysis, computer design and theoretical biology. My best-known contribution is the Turing machine, a formal model of algorithm and computation that can stand in for a general-purpose computer.

AboutExperienceCasesThinkingBeyond
Proof · case studies

Cases

The situation, the work, the outcome. Ranked by how much the work proves.

1

I specified the bombe to break Enigma by crib

1938 — 1940
Situation
GC&CS from September 1938, building on the rotor wiring and methods the Polish Cipher Bureau shared in July 1939.
Action
With Dilly Knox I developed a crib-based approach to Enigma that did not depend on the German indicator procedure, and I wrote the engineering specification of the bombe — the machine design behind the codebreaking technology. The first one was installed on 18 March 1940.
Outcome
In engineering I design for the general case, so the machine survived when the enemy changed the procedure the earlier method depended on.
cryptanalysisenigmamachine design
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2

We wrote to Churchill for bombes and got ACTION THIS DAY

1941 — 1941
Situation
Bletchley Park had a working Enigma decryption system but too few people and bombes to read all the signals and keep up with German changes.
Action
In October 1941, with Welchman, Alexander and Milner-Barry, I wrote directly to Winston Churchill — as first named — after proper channels failed to fund staff and bombes. He ordered our needs met on extreme priority.
Outcome
When a small, well-argued request unblocks a large return, going straight to the decision-maker can be the right call.
leadershipbletchley parkresource advocacy
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3

I broke the naval Enigma indicator system in December 1939

1939 — 1943
Situation
Hut 8 at Bletchley Park; later, November 1942 to March 1943, I worked with US Navy cryptanalysts in Washington on naval Enigma and bombe construction.
Action
I took on German naval Enigma, whose indicator system was more complex than the other services'. In December 1939 I solved its essential part, and that same night conceived Banburismus to cut the bombe time needed to test settings.
Outcome
I go after the hardest unclaimed problem and pair the break with a method that makes the existing machines more productive.
cryptanalysisenigmastatistics
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4

I wrote the first detailed stored-program computer design

1945 — 1950
Situation
NPL, 1945–1947, in the shadow of von Neumann's less detailed First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC and of wartime secrecy.
Action
At the National Physical Laboratory I designed the ACE (Automatic Computing Engine) and presented it on 19 February 1946 — the first detailed design of a stored-program computer, where program and software sit in the same memory as data. The Pilot ACE ran its first program on 10 May 1950.
Outcome
Computer engineering is where I took a theoretical model of computation all the way to a buildable machine specification that could run software.
computer architecturestored-program computercomputing
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5

How the bombe rules out Enigma settings by contradiction

1939 — 1940

The bombe is an engineering answer to a search problem: the machine searches Enigma's rotor order, rotor settings and plugboard settings by chaining logical deductions from a crib and discarding every setting that produces a contradiction, leaving only a few for hand checking.

cryptanalysisenigmasearch algorithms
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