Alan Turing was a dedicated mathematician who devoted his lives works to developing computer knowledge, as we know it today. Alan was born in London, England on June 23, 1912. Alan soon began to attend a local school and his interest in the science fields arose. His teachers an others would try and make him concentrate on other fields such as History an English but his craving for knowledge of mathematics drove him the opposite way. Turings prosperous career in math started at King's College, Cambridge University in 1931. After graduation Alan moved on to Princeton University and that is where he explored his idea of a multi propose computer that used ones and zeros to describe the steps that needed to be done to solve a particular problem. His machine was later named the Turning Machine, which would read each of the steps and perform them in sequence, resulting in the proper answer. Turing had a vision of a computer that could do more than just a few tasks. Turing believed that an algorithm, which is a procedure for solving a mathematical problem in a finite number of steps that frequently involves repetition of an operation, or a step-by-step procedure for solving a problem or accomplishing an answer used by a computer. The hard part was finding what the little steps were a how to break down the larger problems. During World War II, Turing used his mathematical skills in the Department of Communications in Britain to decipher German codes. The Germans were using a type of computer called the Enigma which was able to generate a constantly changing code that was impossible for the code breakers to decipher in a timely fashion. During this time Turing and his fellow scientists worked on a computer called The Colossus which would break down the Germans Enigma code into a matter of minutes. The Colossus may have been just a hunk of metal to a person of our time but it was truly one of the first steps towards digital computer...
