Search engine giant Google paid tributes to computer pioneer Alan Turing on his 100th birth anniversary on June 23 with a new doodle.
Google has come out with a functioning interactive Turing machine which allows users to break five digit binary codes six times. For each rightly performed task, the letters in Google's logo, which has been greyed out, will be added with their symbolic colours of blue, green and red.
British mathematician Alan Turing, popularly known as the father of computing and artificial intelligence, was born in London on June 23, 1912. He invented the Turing machine, which is the simplest form of a computer. He helped in forming algorithms and concepts which had a main role in the creation of the modern computer.
During the World War II, Alan Turing was heading a team responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. He cracked the German Enigma secret ciphers using a number of techniques. He used a method called bombe that helped in decoding the German Enigma. His methods allowed him to crack codes that helped the allies, during the war, to find and destroy Germany's military and naval units.
In January 1952, Turing was convicted for being a homosexual. Homosexuality was illegal in the UK during that period. In 1954, just two weeks before his 42 birthday, Turing committed suicide. He was found dead by his cleaner at his home and post-mortem reports suggested that Turing had poisoned himself with cyanide.
In 2009, the then British prime minister Gordon Brown apologised formally for the treatment meted out to Turing for his homosexuality.
Turing's memory is immortalised in the form of the Turing Award, which is touted as 'the Nobel Prize of computing'. The award was first given in 1966 and is given annually by the New York-based Association of Computing Machinery. The award consists of a cash prize of $250,000, which is sponsored by Intel and Google.
The video below shows how to solve Alan Turing Google Doodle.
