Weird History
The Life and Death of Alan Turing
2021 • E60 May 19, 2021 10m
Alan Turing was one of the world’s greatest geniuses. He basically invented the modern computer and was instrumental in helping end WWII, even though he never set foot on a battlefield. The Germans had invented the ultimate message coding device, the Enigma machine, and if the Allies wanted to take down Hitler, they were going to need to figure it out. Fortunately, there was Alan Turing’s code breaking park, Bletchley, where he and others achieved movie-worthy feats. In fact, it did make a great film, The Imitation Game, released in 2014 and starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the man himself.