Alan Turing Timeline

  • Education

    Education
    Turing gets a scholarship to King’s College, Cambridge, where he studies mathematics.
  • The "Logical Computing Machine"

    The "Logical Computing Machine"
    Turing envisions a simple machine that had the ability to handle any mathematical computation using an infinite tape of symbols and a table of instructions.
  • Church-Turing Thesis

    The work of Alan Turing and Alonzo Church is combined to show that anything that is computable by humans can also be computed by the Turing machine.
  • Entscheidungsproblem

    Turing publishes a paper which shows that the decision problem is unsolvable. The paper was great for the development of mathematical theory.
  • Code Breaking

    Turing joins the Government Code and Cypher school and is moved to the wartime headquarters at the start of war with Germany.
  • Relative Computing

    Turing introduces the concept or ordinal logic and relative computing. The idea of Turing machines are augmented with "oracles" that allow the study of problems that cannot be solved by Turing machines.
  • Bombe machine

    Bombe machine
    Turing and others design another code-breaking machine that was used to supply allies with large quantities of military intelligence.
  • Banburismus

    Turing develops a statistical procedure known as Banburismus which allowed for more efficient use of the Bombe devices.
  • Tunny is broken

    Turing devised the first systematic method for breaking messages encrypted with a German machine called "Tunny"
  • Officer of OBE

    Turing is made an officer of the Most Exellent Order of the British Empire for his work in code-breaking.
  • Automatic Computing Engine

    Automatic Computing Engine
    Turing is recruited to the National Physical Laboratory to create an electronic computer. Turing has a design for an automatic computing engine which was the first complete specification for a fully electronic stored-program computer.
  • Turochamp

    Turochamp
    Turing along with David Champernowne develop a chess program that humans can play against.
  • Turing Test

    Turing devises the Turing test, where a computer is considered to be thinking if its responses cannot be distinguished from the responses of a human.
  • Morphogenesis

    Turing becomes interested in mathematical biology and writes a paper based on morphogenesis. Predicts phenomenon such as oscillating chemical reactions.
  • Chinese Room

    John Searle challenges the idea of the Turing Test, where an English speaker that doesn't know Chinese is given a set of rules on how to respond to Chinese characters. A good enough manual could convince the interrogator that the person was a real Chinese speaker.