Alan Turing

Hello there. My name is Alan Turing, and I want to tell you my story. I was born a long time ago, on June 23rd, 1912, in a city called London. Even when I was a very little boy, I saw the whole world as one giant, exciting puzzle just waiting to be solved. I wasn't very interested in the usual games other children played. Instead, I loved playing with numbers and doing science experiments in my home. I thought about how things worked and was always asking questions. It was like my brain was always trying to figure out a secret code hidden in everyday things, from the way a flower grew to the way the stars were arranged in the sky. I had a wonderful friend named Christopher who loved science just as much as I did. We would talk for hours about amazing scientific ideas and dream about the discoveries we would make one day. Sadly, my dear friend got very sick and passed away. It was one of the saddest times in my life, but it also made me promise myself that I would work extra hard to explore all the scientific ideas we loved to talk about together. I wanted to make our dreams come true.

When I grew up, a very serious time began called World War II. The world felt like a very scary place, and countries were fighting each other. I knew I had to use my love for puzzles to help. I went to work at a top-secret place called Bletchley Park. It was filled with some of the cleverest people I had ever met, and we all had a very important job. The enemy was using a special machine called Enigma to send secret messages to each other. Imagine a typewriter that scrambled every letter into a secret code. It was so tricky that the code changed every single day. It was our job to figure out what the secret messages said. It was like the hardest puzzle in the world. I thought, 'We can't solve this just with our brains. We need a machine to fight a machine.' So, I designed a giant, clever machine of my own. We nicknamed it the 'Bombe.' It was as big as a room and made lots of clicking and clacking sounds as it worked. The Bombe could check thousands of possibilities much faster than a person ever could. It helped us crack the Enigma codes super fast. Our teamwork at Bletchley Park helped our leaders know the enemy's plans, and because of that, we helped save many, many people's lives.

After the war was over, I couldn't stop thinking about machines. If a machine could solve codes, what else could it do? This led to my biggest dream of all: creating 'thinking machines.' That might sound a little silly, but what I imagined is what you call computers today. I dreamed that one day, machines could do more than just add numbers. I believed they could learn things, solve all kinds of problems, and maybe even have a conversation with you, just like a person. I even came up with a test, which some people call the Turing Test, to see if a machine could think just like a human. Some people didn't understand my ideas. They thought machines were just for doing simple tasks. It was hard when people didn't believe in my dreams, but I never stopped being curious and asking, 'What if?'. I passed away in 1954, but my ideas lived on. Today, my dream is in every computer, tablet, and phone you use. So always remember to stay curious, ask big questions, and don't be afraid to think differently. You never know what amazing puzzles you might solve.