Hi there! Something a little different i suppose, but with the release of The Imitation Game, i’ve been reading up a lot on Alan Turing recently and i just completely adore him. What a wonderful wonderful man.
I’m completely astonished that (just showing how powerful and how influential film it can be) until i heard about this film being made just over a year ago, i didn’t really know who Alan Turing was, which frankly having just finished an education that involved a maths degree, A Level maths and further maths and GCSE ICT and history including focus around World War II and with friends having just completed degrees in computer science…is appalling.
I’ve reviewed a short book based around him on this site before (The Big Idea – Turing and the Computer) and i’m sure you’ll hear more from me in the future now that i’m reading into his life and work a lot..but i won’t waffle on about him here right now because i could seriously go on for days!
I do recommend you go and research him yourself though, such a beautiful, inspiring man and such an unsung hero.
Anyway!
With my apparent love for puzzles and maths (i suppose i have to love it deep down or i wouldn’t have done a degree in it) i got a huge amount of pleasure out of researching about the ENIGMA machine. I’m hoping to learn about Turing’s machine “The Bombe” that cracked the German Enigma code but before i got to that i figured i should understand Enigma first.
Now if there’s one thing i found throughout my degree is that no one ever seems to put any mathematical literature out there so that non-mathematical human beings can understand it, and everything you need never seems to be all nicely together in one place (i know…i sound like it just want someone to do all the work for me but ugh..effort). I mean…i work in maths…numbers..processes…practical examples…not paragraphs and paragraphs of words that make no sense to me…brain malfunction..does not compute. I always end up reinterpreting everything into simpler method explanations and terminology so i can understand it and go back to it with ease.
So this was just for me to start with but i thought….why not share!
I’ve really enjoyed learning all of this for myself, because even with my experience in maths this was still all new stuff for me. I suppose the advantage i did have was being able to understand and explains some of the mathematical notation and verify the calculations myself where i could. But..anyway!
Should you be interested, which i hope The Imitation Game and Alan Turing will inspire people to be, here is my explanation of the Enigma machine. Explanations as to the version of the machine i am using and any disclaimer comments are in the document itself!
Enjoy! Feel free to ask me any questions or let me know if you spot any mistakes or anything i’ve missed! Thanks!
All we have to decide, is what to do with the time that is given to us 