Saturday, 23 June will mark 100 years since the birth of Alan Turing, who not only spearheaded Britain's code breaking at Bletchley Park which saw the German Enigma machine cracked, but also researched artificial intelligence and helped to create the world's first commercially sold computer.

Born in Maida Vale, London in 1912, Turing showed signs from a young age that he was a particularly gifted child when it came to mathematics and went on to study the subject at King's College, Cambridge, where he gained a first-class honours degree at the age of 21.

Bletchley Park and Cracking the Enigma

During the Second World War, Turing joined the war effort at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, where he worked with a team of mathematicians to try and crack the German Enigma code using an electromagnet machine called a "bombe".

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The bombe searched for possible correct settings used for an Enigma message and for each possible setting the bombe performed a chain of logical deductions.

Detecting when a contradiction had occurred, the bombe ruled out that setting and moved on to the next.

Most of the possible settings would cause contradictions and be discarded, leaving only a few to be investigated in detail. The first bombe was installed on 18 March 1940, but by the end of the war more than 200 bombes were in use.

Artificial Intelligence and the Turing Test

Read more:

Alan Turing - Life and Tragic Death of Enigma and Computing Hero