In the movie of Enigma, there was a clear connection between the fictional character Tom Jericho and the famous Alan Turing. They shared many character traits and both were once in the same situation.
Alan Mathison Turing was known for many things: a mathematician, logician, and a computer scientist. He was the founder of the Turing machine, and was commonly considered the father of computer science and artificial intelligence. He put forward new concepts of algorithms and computations with the Turing Machine, and he was a highly influential person in computer science. A programming language developed by Ric Holt and James Cordy was named after him (Known as Turing).
What wasn’t mentioned about Alan above was that he was also a very clever cryptographer who had actually once been a part of the famous Bletchley Park. In fact, the fictional character Tom Jericho was based on him. However, Turing’s name had not been mentioned once throughout the movie, but one could easily see that he was the portrayed character.
The Enigma machine presented in the movie was a real machine used by the Germans in the World War 2 invented at the end of the First World War. Fortunately, just before the Second World War started, Polish scientists Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rzycki and Henryk Zygalski made a major breakthrough in deciphering of the Enigma Machine. When Alan joined the Bletchley Park at the beginning of the war, he had the works of the previous scientists to help him. With his clever mind and the previous information, Alan was able to make huge advances in deciphering both the Enigma machine and the Lorenz SZ 40/42 (a Teleprinter cipher attachment codenamed Tunny by the British).
His most major contribution was his design on the Bombe machine, which replaced the former and much less efficient Bomba. This machine became the primary tool to attack Enigma machines and decipher their code. This new machine searched for settings in which the message was first encoded in, and with the settings, this machine rules out all the contradictions and leave only a few remainder combinations to be inspected. This machine was so successful and popular that by the end of the war, over 200 Bombes were in operation.
Alan did not break the Enigma machine alone. He collaborated with Dilly Knox, a senior GCCS (Government Code and Cipher School) code breaker. Since the war started, he had been working part-time for the GCCS as well.
Alan was also a very hard working individual, and that personality was referred to in Tom Jericho, who in the beginning of the movie worked so hard at Bletchley Park that he collapsed and was sent home to rest. In fact, Alan had left a reputation as a hard and responsible worker at Bletchley Park. Jack Good, one of his fellow cryptanalysts who worked with him, quoted:
“In the first week of June each year he would get a bad attack of hay fever, and he would cycle to the office wearing a service gas mask to keep the pollen off. His bicycle had a fault: the chain would come off at regular intervals. Instead of having it mended he would count the number of times the pedals went round and would get off the bicycle in time to adjust the chain by hand. Another of his eccentricities is that he chained his mug to the radiator pipes to prevent it being stolen.”
Tom Jericho was not only based on Alan’s achievements and personalities, but at the same time, Alan was for a time the head of the Hut 8, the section responsible to decipher German Naval messages. Throughout the war, he was a major help to the Bletchley park for breaking the Enigma machines, and Bletchley Park’s code deciphering was crucial to the victory of the Allied forces, as they have deciphered thousands of important secret messages sent by the Germans, and that information saved thousands of lives and gave the Allied forces important information in battle.
The German naval Enigma was particularly difficult to break, but Alan solved the essential naval indicator system and also developed a new technique known as the “Banburismus (sequential statistical technique)” to breakdown the enemy naval Enigma machines. Here is Hugh Alexander’s comment on Alan (He was the succeeding head of the department):
“There should be no question in anyone’s mind that Turing’s work was the biggest factor in Hut 8’s success. In the early days he was the only cryptographer who thought the problem worth tackling and not only was he primarily responsible for the main theoretical work within the Hut but he also shared with Welchman and Keen the chief credit for the invention of the Bombe. It is always difficult to say that anyone is absolutely indispensable but if anyone was indispensable to Hut 8 it was Turing. The pioneer’s work always tends to be forgotten when experience and routine later make everything seem easy and many of us in Hut 8 felt that the magnitude of Turing’s contribution was never fully realized by the outside world.”
When the war ended in 1945, Alan’s work had not been revealed to the public for many years just like the secrecy of Bletchley Park’s work. However, he did receive the OBE (Order of the British Empire) medal for his contributions.
When the war ended in 1945, Alan’s work had not been revealed to the public for many years just like the secrecy of Bletchley Park’s work. However, he did receive the OBE (Order of the British Empire) medal for his contributions.
Unfortunately, Alan died at a young age of 41 due to Cyanide poisoning. However, he has left a legacy both in the world of computing and in Bletchley Park that will live on for centuries.
Quad Members: Branson, Hareesh, Sijia, Vlad, Zelin.
Credits (Pictures):
- Portrait of Alan Turing: Alan Turing (2010). Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alan_Turing_photo.jpg. Retrieved 2011-10-02.
- Bletchley Park: Bletchley Park (2006). Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bletchley_Park.jpg. Retrieved 2011-10-02.
- Bombe machine: Bombe Rebuild (2005). Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bombe-rebuild.jpg. Retrieved 2011-10-02.
- Statue of Alan Turing: Alan Turing (2009). Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AlanTuring-Bletchley.jpg. Retrieved 2011-10-02.
- SZ42-6 Cipher Machine: SZ42-6 (2006). Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SZ42-6-wheels-lightened.jpg. Retrieved 2011-10-02.
Credits (Content):
- Alan Turing. (n.d.) Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing on 2011-10-02.
- Enigma 2001 Film. (n.d.) Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_(2001_film) on 2011-10-02.
- Enigma Machine. (n.d.) Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine on 2011-10-02.
- Hodges, Andrews (n.d.). The Alan Turing Home Page. (n.d.) Retrieved from http://www.turing.org.uk/turing/ on 2011-10-02.
- Hodges, Andrew, "Alan Turing", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/turing/ on 2011-10-02.
