Charles Babbage 1792-1871 Invented the first computer (depending on what you consider a computer is). On two occasions I have been asked by members of Parliament, "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. -- Charles Babbage,

Was socially responsible Thought the voting process would be more reputable and honest if you didn’t use computers* Build a simple working version of the difference engine because he had skills as a technician (and smarts). But gave up / ran out of money and decided to to create the Analytic engine, which would have used a punch card system, had it ever been build. Was eventually created and proven to work. Invented the Cow catcher! Street musicians played at his funeral * Computers, at the time, were people

Difference Engine

If the Analytical Engine had been built, it would have been in many ways more advanced than some of the first computers that emerged in the 1940s. It would have been digital, programmable and Turing complete. However, it would have been very slow. Ada Lovelace reported in her notes on the Analytical engine: "Mr. Babbage believes he can, by his engine, form the product of two numbers, each containing twenty figures, in three minutes". By comparison the Harvard Mark I could perform the same task in just six seconds. A modern PC can do the same thing in well under a billionth of a second. Being equivalent to the universal Turing machine essentially means being able to perform any computational task—though it does not mean being able to perform such tasks efficiently, quickly, or easily. The term derives from the name of mathematician Alan Turing who introduced the model of the universal Turing machine.

Ada Lovelace First programmer ever (computed the Bernoulli numbers) for the Analytic Engine (which was never built). Daughter of Lord Byron.

Alan Turing 1912 - 1954

Enigma Machine, German code creator during WW2

Bombe, created numbers for breaking the German cipher.

Bletchley Park

There was still a lot of human work involved in finding the “key” for the day that often relied on understanding the people involved. The bombe had to be updated as the Enigma went from 3-4-5 rings. Often, lives had to be sacrificed so as to not let the Germans know they knew. Lots of probability math. Problem was that the scientific community was small enough that they knew how smart each other were.

Turing test was based on a 19th century parlor trick first done with gender not machines. Turing adapted the game to apply to machines, even though computing was not yet feasible. He foresaw much of what he thought his machines could become.

Turing was gay, and pretty out of the closet for post war England Turing was gay, and pretty out of the closet for post war England. At the time, if you can believe it, it was illegal to be gay. He was charged with "acts of gross indecency” and was forced to undergo estrogen therapy and place under house arrest. Turing died after eating an apple laced with cyanide in 1954 (he had a thing about Snow White)