The Man Who Knew Too Much

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1912 – 1954 s: The story of Alan Turing, the persecuted genius who helped break the Enigma code and create the modern computer.

ISBN: 978-0753822005
Genre: Biography/memoirs

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What you need to know before your trail

To solve one of the great mathematical problems of his day, Alan Turing proposed an imaginary programmable calculating machine. But the idea of actually producing a ‘thinking machine’ did not crystallise until he and his brilliant Bletchley Park colleagues built devices to crack the Nazis’ Enigma code, thus ensuring the Allied victory in the Second World War. In so doing, Turing became a champion of artificial intelligence, formulating the famous (and still unbeaten) Turing test that challenges our ideas of human consciousness.

But Turing’s work was cut short when, as an openly gay man in a time when homosexuality was illegal in Britain, he was apprehended by the authorities and sentenced to a ‘treatment’ that amounted to chemical castration. Ultimately, it lead to his suicide, and it wasn’t until 2013, after many years of campaigning, that he received a posthumous royal pardon.

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Bletchley Park

Alan Turing was not ‘famous’ or well known in any way during his lifetime. Today however, he is famous for being the man who conceived modern computing and played a crucial part in the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in WW2.

Tragically, he was also a victim of mid-20th Century attitudes to homosexuality – he was chemically castrated before dying at the age of 41 from cyanide poisoning. It is still uncertain whether it was suicide or not.

When you get to see Alan Turing’s desk – speechless. This man’s story is more than retold here – there’s even a brick in an honorary wall bearing his name. And his office was so small! Oh and that huge machine he built – remarkable. There are no words to describe what he achieved and what it’s like standing in the very spot he made history.