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Gregd

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Alan Turing: Unlocking the Enigma

by David Boyle

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read in January 2015

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Gregd said: " The book Alan Turing: Unlocking the Enigma is one of the best non-fiction books out there. It is so great because of two reasons. The first reason I found this book to be amazing is because it is very exciting. My second reason for loving this book i The book Alan Turing: Unlocking the Enigma is one of the best non-fiction books out there. It is so great because of two reasons. The first reason I found this book to be amazing is because it is very exciting. My second reason for loving this book is because it shows the amazing ideas Alan Turing visualized and started to put into motion which make the book very interesting. I believe that these two reasons are the sole purpose that this book is amazing.
Alan Turing had a very exciting life because of the many great opportunities he got. For instance he was able to say that he became a fellow at King's college at the young age of 22. He could also say things like he got his PhD at Princeton and got to debate with some of the most influential people of his time. One amazing opportunity that I believe stands out above all is his war fighting efforts. He and his team cracked the code by making a machine which for that time period was unheard of. "In fact, one of the female mathematicians was becoming close to Turing: Joan Clarke, who was also working on the naval Enigma code. They became friends, went to the cinema and spent their leaves together, meeting each other’s parents"(Location 496 of 1199). This quote shows that some of his activities during this war fighting time were very exciting specifically this one because he got engaged. This opportunity was only one of many that proved to make the book very exciting.
Alan Turing, during his life visualized many different inventions all of which were revolutionary for the time. To read about the visualizer of these inventions in action makes this book very interesting. Alan turing envisioned AI (artificial life) and even made his own rule to prove if it was in fact a real thinking machine. "He proposed an imitation game. There would be a man (A), a woman (B) and an interrogator (C) in a separate room, reading the written answers from the others, trying to work out which was the woman. B would be trying to hinder the process. Now, said Turing, imagine that A was replaced by a computer. Could the interrogator tell whether they were talking to a machine or not after five minutes of questioning?"(Location 699 of 1199) This test was revolutionary and was a goal for many people to try to achieve. Today a lot of games use AI for instance a lot of chess games use AI to play the user and so to see the pioneer of this makes this book very interesting. Another thing that Alan Turing envisioned that we use a lot today is the computer. The first time he conceptualized of this was during his war time efforts to crack the Enigma code. "Then there was the problem of a crib testing machine. This time it was not enough to imagine the kind of computing machine that might solve the problem. Turing and his colleague Gordon Welchman (from Hut 6) had to actually build one. His first bombe was called Victory . It was seven feet long and six feet high, and it weighed a ton. It had the power to simulate the actions of 30 Enigma machines at once."(Location 430 of 1199) This quote describes the machine that Turing had envisioned and actually made which is also used a lot today. This machine today is called a computer. By describing many Turing's inventions we can see the types of machines today that may have been influenced by his work, making the book very interesting.
I enjoyed this book very much and this is because of two reasons. One reason is because of the various opportunities Alan Turing gets. And the other reason I enjoyed this book is because of all of the inventions of Alan Turing's that are shown. These reasons make the book very compelling to read and are also the reasons that I would recommend others to read this book. ...more "

Jan 20, 2015 09:27PM · see review