Alan Turing Quest
What honor from Time magazine in 1999?
100 Most Important People of the 20th century (everyone who taps on a keyboard is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine)
What was Turbochamp?
A chess computer program designed by Turing (did not work on Mark 1)
What is the Turingery (Tunny)
A manual cryptanalysis technique used in breaking the Lorenz cipher during World War II, based on deducing the wheel settings of the machine that did the encryption.
What is Delilah?
A portable secure voice scrambler developed by Turing at Hanslope Park (idea of electronic enciphering of speech in the telephone system)
Name the mathematician that Turing worked closely with while studying The Decision Problem
Alonzo Church
What company's logo is often erroneously referred to as a tribute to Alan Turing?
Apple Computer
Name of the Polish machine that was being used to decipher German Enigma signals
Bomba (Polish word for a type of ice cream)
What is the Bombe?
Bombe was the primary-code breaking machine designed by Turing used during World War II to attack Enigma messages
Name of a play about Alan Turing that ran in London's West End, Broadway, then a BBC television production
Breaking the Code
Name of television drama-documentary that aired 2011 about Turing
Codebreaker
How did Turing die?
Cyanide poisoning (ruled a suicide)
What is placed at Turing's childhood home as an honor?
English Heritage Blue Plaque
What is the name of the German military code that Turing worked to break?
Enigma
Describe Turing's Mother
Ethel, Sara Stoney: Daughter of chief engineer, spent much of her childhood in Ireland
In 2012, Year of Alan Turing, what special events occurred?
Google held a Turing Machine doodle, an Alan Turing edition of Monopoly was issued, international conference in Philippines, India held Gay Pride festival, Oxford offered a new course in Computer Science
Describe the famous statue of Turing in Manchester
He is sitting on a bench in the middle of the park and is holding an apple. Motto "Founder of Computer Science" is written as if it could appear encoded by an Enigma Machine. At his feet it says "Father of computer science, mathematician, logician, wartime codebreaker, victim of prejudice"
What did his postage stamp look like that was issued in 2000?
His picture with a background of 0's and 1's captioned (1937: Alan Turing's theory of digital computing)
Where did Turing receive his Ph.D in mathematical logic in 1938?
Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey
What is a ban?
Invented by Turing as a measure of weight of evidence
Describe Turing's 1936 paper
It was on Computable Numbers with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem (Decision Problem) that a universal algorithmic method of determining truth in math cannot exist. Turing proved there was no solution to the Enthscheidungsproblem.
Describe Turing's Father
Julius Mathison Turing: British member of the Indian civil service
Date Born
June 23, 1912
When did Turing die?
June 7, 1954
Where did Turing attend college?
King's College (University of Cambridge) in Cambridge, England from 1931 -1934
What was Turing's most notable contribution at the National Physical Laboratory?
Led the design work for the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) and ultimately created a groundbreaking blueprint for computers. (Complete version, never built, only pilot)
What spot is Turing very good at?
Long-distance running (Tried out for 1948 British Olympic Team)
When was the first Bombe installed?
Mach 18, 1940
Where was he born?
Maida Vale, London, England
What did Jack Copeland in 2012 argue about Turing's death?
May have been an accident (apple never tested, no suicidal indications, he had cyanide in his home for experiments)
In the mid-1940's Turing worked for which company?
National Physical Laboratory (NPL)
What was Turing inducted into in October 2014?
National Security Agency Hall of Honor (NSA)
Describe Turing's Siblings
One older brother named John
What honor did Turing receive for his code-breaking work from King George VI?
Order of the British Empire
What was the 2007 life size statue of Turing in Bletchley Park built from?
Over half a million pieces of slate
What were the results of Turing's conviction?
Put on temporary probation and received hormone treatment, his security clearance was removed and he was barred from his work with cryptography at the GCCS, and was denied entry into the US
What honor from Princeton University?
Second most significant alumnus in history (second to President James Madison)
When and by whom was an apology issued to Turing for prosecuting him as a homosexual?
September 10th, 2009 by Prime Minister Gordon Brown on behalf of the British Government
What did Queen Elizabeth II do on December 24, 2013?
She signed a pardon for Turing's conviction for gross indecency and officially pronounced him pardoned!
Where did Turing attend school at age 13?
Sherborn School
Name the British code-breaking organization Turing worked
The Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS) at Bletchley Park
What is the name of the historical drama that was released about Turing in November 2014?
The Imitation Game
Who was Joan Clarke?
Turing's fiance who was his co-worker at Hut 8 (Part of the GCCS school) but they did not marry because Turing admitted to her his homosexuality
Describe Turing's young childhood
While parents were traveling between England and India he was left with a retired army couple, he attended St Michael's at age six
What is the Ferranti Mark 1?
World's first commercially available stored-program, electronic digital computer whose programming system was designed by Turing
What is the Colossus Computer?
World's first programmable digital electronic computer. It is mistaken that Turing was a key figure in the design of this computer
What was commissioned in Bletchley on May 17, 2014?
World's first work of public art to recognize Alan Turing as a homosexual
What is the Banburismus?
a cryptanalytic process developed by Alan Turing at Bletchley Park in England during the Second World War. It was used by Bletchley Park's Hut 8 to help break German Kriegsmarine (naval) messages enciphered on Enigma machines.
What is a Turing Machine?
a mathematical model of a hypothetical computing machine that can use a predefined set of rules to determine a result from a set of input variables (considered a model for general computers)
What is the Turing Award?
annual award given by the Association for Computing Machinery (considered the computing world's highest honor, equivalent to a Nobel Prize)
Who was Christopher Morcom?
friend of Turing at Sherbon that provided him with inspiration. He died from bovine tuberculosis and this shattered his faith. Turing became an atheist.
What was Turing charged with in January 1952?
gross indecency (he admitted to police he had homosexual relations and this was illegal in the United Kingdom at this time)
What did Turing study from 1952 until his death in 1954?
mathematical biology, specifically morphogenesis
By 1942 how many intercepted messages were being decoded at Bletchley Park?
started at 39,000 a month and rose to more than 84,000 per month
What is cryptanalysis?
the art or process of deciphering coded messages without being told the key
