Alan Turing

Some photos taken recently in Manchester, a memorial to an amazing genius (and atheist) Alan Turing. If you have seen the movie The Imitation Game

you will know something about this great man. He died 7th June 1954 Cyanide poisoning, it's believed he committed suicide, later in life his mind was unbalanced because he was forced to take synthetic hormones or go to jail because he was a homosexual which was against the law during these times (Christian values from an Iron Age fairy tale book which impacts upon the laws of a nation)

His death at the time went almost unnoticed but deserved so much recognition for the lives this man saved during world war 2 by cracking German ciphers thus helping the allies win over the Germans during the battle for the Atlantic and helping to win the war. We have a lot to thank this man for, he also designed the first chess program in 1954. After the war he was pivotal in designing the first storage computers at Manchester university (where I took these photos) so everyone should thank this guy when your scrolling through Facebook or shopping online (or curse him on a Monday morning when your pc at work fails to boot up :)

A truly remarkable man who died 16 days before this 42 birthday due to persecution from a government who he helped save from the Nazi boot!!

At the outbreak of World War Two, Alan joined the Government Codes and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. He worked on breaking the code for the German Enigma machine, a device for sending coded messages to units of the German forces. Alan developed a machine (the Bombe) which helped break the code. He also went on to break the Naval Enigma, an even more complicated machine. His wartime services helped to win the war, but his work was so secret that very few people were aware of the importance of what he had done at Bletchley Park. The buildings in which Alan Turing worked to crack the Enigma code during the Second World War belongs to British Telecom and the Bletchley Park Trust was formed to maintain the site as a museum. Next year it will be the UK’s first National College of Cyber Security after a £5m restoration. It will be a free boarding college and will select gifted students aged 16 to 19, and house some of the most advanced cyber test and demonstration facilities in the world. BT will be among the UK cybersecurity experts who will inform the syllabus. Students will also study maths, computer science and physics. From 2017 there will also be a £50m investment fund to support cybersecurity businesses. On Alan's monument there is a apple in his hand which represents Newton and knowledge or does it represent the apple he eat which was laced with cyanide which he eat to die?