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Description

For anyone interested, this is a video of my process when colouring a photograph

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZv4cm…

“Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine.”
― Alan Turing

This is the extraordinary story of a man called Alan Mathison Turing OBE FRS (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954)

The Enigma machine is a cipher device developed and used in the early to mid 20th century to protect commercial, diplomatic, and military communication. It was employed extensively by Nazi Germany during World War II, in all branches of the German military. The Germans believed, erroneously, that use of the Enigma machine enabled them to communicate securely and thus enjoy a huge advantage in World War II. The Enigma machine was considered to be so secure that even the most top-secret messages were enciphered on its electrical circuits.

The first time the Enigma machine was in fact cracked was by a Polish team in 1932, Marian Rejewski, Henryk Zygalski and Jerzy Różycki who probably never got the recognition they deserved (Although Bletchley Park has a statue dedicated to Marian Rejewski). However, by the time of the second world war, the Germans had made it even harder to crack by improving it's procedures. By 1939 with the war looming, the Poles decided to share what they knew with the allies

Britain quickly decided to assemble some of the greatest mathematical, scientific and logical minds together full time to crack the Enigma code; one of those was the quite brilliant Alan Turing who led the team at Bletchey Park.*

Even more difficult to crack was the fiendishly puzzling Lorenz cipher code which was used solely by the German high command and Adolf Hitler. This was so difficult to crack that Turing and his team developed a machine called the 'Bombe' which used algorithms to decipher the enigma code and which was effectively the first ever computer called 'Colossus'(built with the aid of another brilliant man, the electrical engineer, Tommy Flowers). His Turing machine theory gave birth to the concept of modern programming languages. So the team had contributed to the the beginings of what became the modern computer, but the British authorities (in their wisdom) decided to keep it a secret other than that they then later decided to 'give it away' to the American CIA (I know). Quite a lot of people in the British establishment during wartime, were questioning what these boffins wearing tweed and smoking pipes were actually doing with quite a large budget and wondered if it was worth keeping them going at all. After Churchill visited personally and saw what they were doing he famously wrote a memo which simply and famously said 'Give them what they want'

Not only did Turing's work help the western allies, it also helped the Soviets too. After the defeat at Stalingrad, Hitler and his Generals planned a quick counterstirke to regain the initiative on the Russian city of Kursk. Turing and his team were able to intercept messages between the Fuhrer and his generals on tactics and pass it onto the Soviets (who by now actually started to trust the information that was given them by the western allies), meaning they then had a great advantage in the great tank battle that followed.

After the war, in 1952, Turing was convicted for 'gross indecency' for having a relationship with another man and sentenced to be 'chemically' castrated by the courts. He was tormented by the authorities because he was gay and was then refused work in any Government position. He later commited suicide by 'allegedly' eating a poisoned apple laced with cyanide in 1954. It was later thought that the Apple logo was dedicated to him (the apple with a bite taken out) but when asked about this, Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple said "It isn't true but God, we wish it were"

In 2009, after a large internet campaign, Gordon Brown, the then British Prime minister, made an impassioned, but far too late, apology on behalf of the British Government to him describing Turing's treatment as "horrifying" and "utterly unfair", Brown said that the country owed the brilliant mathematician a huge debt and he was proud to offer an official apology. "We're sorry, you deserved so much better,"

Eisenhower, the wartime American President estimated that cracking the Enigma, it had helped shorten the war by up to two years

Information courtesy of QI

* It was really interesting how the original team was assembled at Bletchley Park. A fiendishly hard crossword competition was run in the highbrow Daily Telegraph newspaper that was so very difficult to solve that the compilers contacted the winners saying ' we think that you might be our kind of person'

Description

For anyone interested, this is a video of my process when colouring a photograph

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZv4cm…

“Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine.”
― Alan Turing

This is the extraordinary story of a man called Alan Mathison Turing OBE FRS (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954)

The Enigma machine is a cipher device developed and used in the early to mid 20th century to protect commercial, diplomatic, and military communication. It was employed extensively by Nazi Germany during World War II, in all branches of the German military. The Germans believed, erroneously, that use of the Enigma machine enabled them to communicate securely and thus enjoy a huge advantage in World War II. The Enigma machine was considered to be so secure that even the most top-secret messages were enciphered on its electrical circuits.

The first time the Enigma machine was in fact cracked was by a Polish team in 1932, Marian Rejewski, Henryk Zygalski and Jerzy Różycki who probably never got the recognition they deserved (Although Bletchley Park has a statue dedicated to Marian Rejewski). However, by the time of the second world war, the Germans had made it even harder to crack by improving it's procedures. By 1939 with the war looming, the Poles decided to share what they knew with the allies

Britain quickly decided to assemble some of the greatest mathematical, scientific and logical minds together full time to crack the Enigma code; one of those was the quite brilliant Alan Turing who led the team at Bletchey Park.*

Even more difficult to crack was the fiendishly puzzling Lorenz cipher code which was used solely by the German high command and Adolf Hitler. This was so difficult to crack that Turing and his team developed a machine called the 'Bombe' which used algorithms to decipher the enigma code and which was effectively the first ever computer called 'Colossus'(built with the aid of another brilliant man, the electrical engineer, Tommy Flowers). His Turing machine theory gave birth to the concept of modern programming languages. So the team had contributed to the the beginings of what became the modern computer, but the British authorities (in their wisdom) decided to keep it a secret other than that they then later decided to 'give it away' to the American CIA (I know). Quite a lot of people in the British establishment during wartime, were questioning what these boffins wearing tweed and smoking pipes were actually doing with quite a large budget and wondered if it was worth keeping them going at all. After Churchill visited personally and saw what they were doing he famously wrote a memo which simply and famously said 'Give them what they want'

Not only did Turing's work help the western allies, it also helped the Soviets too. After the defeat at Stalingrad, Hitler and his Generals planned a quick counterstirke to regain the initiative on the Russian city of Kursk. Turing and his team were able to intercept messages between the Fuhrer and his generals on tactics and pass it onto the Soviets (who by now actually started to trust the information that was given them by the western allies), meaning they then had a great advantage in the great tank battle that followed.

After the war, in 1952, Turing was convicted for 'gross indecency' for having a relationship with another man and sentenced to be 'chemically' castrated by the courts. He was tormented by the authorities because he was gay and was then refused work in any Government position. He later commited suicide by 'allegedly' eating a poisoned apple laced with cyanide in 1954. It was later thought that the Apple logo was dedicated to him (the apple with a bite taken out) but when asked about this, Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple said "It isn't true but God, we wish it were"

In 2009, after a large internet campaign, Gordon Brown, the then British Prime minister, made an impassioned, but far too late, apology on behalf of the British Government to him describing Turing's treatment as "horrifying" and "utterly unfair", Brown said that the country owed the brilliant mathematician a huge debt and he was proud to offer an official apology. "We're sorry, you deserved so much better,"

Eisenhower, the wartime American President estimated that cracking the Enigma, it had helped shorten the war by up to two years

Information courtesy of QI

* It was really interesting how the original team was assembled at Bletchley Park. A fiendishly hard crossword competition was run in the highbrow Daily Telegraph newspaper that was so very difficult to solve that the compilers contacted the winners saying ' we think that you might be our kind of person'