This article is going to cover why Alan Turing is a hero and why he earned a spot in our notable men section.
Now I know you have either questioned who that was or have already googled him. That’s OK because I’ll explain why here soon and it’ll make much more sense on why you don’t know his name.
Before I go any further the movie “The Imitation Game”movie is based off of Alan Turing and his story so if you haven’t watched the movie yet or plan to then you’ll come across some spoilers in this article which I won’t be able to avoid since It’s based on real life events.
I just wanted to mention that before I go any further.
Still with me? Great! Then let’s get to discussing about Mr. Alan Turing shall we.
What Did Alan Turing Do To Help Us Win WW2?
I like to think of Alan Turing as the world’s best spy to ever live.
No he didn’t go undercover and infiltrate the ranks or any of the typical stuff that you associate with being a spy but he did allow the British to see almost directly into the battle plans and movements of the German forces in WW2 without them becoming aware.
Knowing your enemies every move sounds amazing right? Of course it does and it saved tens of millions of lives.
Going to break it down for you in my terms on how Alan did what he did. Germany had this device called enigma which allowed the Germans to communicate to each other about troop movement, where they were striking, locations and all kinds of high level information.
Even though the Allies could intercept the messages they had no idea how to decipher what the messages meant because of this enigma machine which was like a complex digital safe that had millions of different possibilities for the password but the problem was the password would change every day.
This had the Allies at a major disadvantage because the AXIS were able to intercept our transmissions, at least some of them while we were flying blind per say.
Alan Turning was able to build a machine that cracked the enigma code every day which basically let us listen in to pretty much their every move.
Why Have I Never Heard Of Alan Turning And Why Wasn’t He Famous
This part directly relates to how “The Imitation Game” movie ends so once again if you aren’t trying to get any spoilers then look away now.
Alright, good glad to have you still reading.
The reason no one has really heard of him, not until most recently of course with the movie being a big exposure for this is because they had to keep it a secret. They as in the government section that he was working for.
After building this monumental device that literally steals Germany’s battle plans per say they couldn’t reveal that they had cracked the enemies’ communication device or they would just stop using it or change it up.
Fast forward to when the war ends, still no one had become the wiser that ‘enigma’ had been cracked by Alan Turings machine.
It wasn’t until 29 years after the end of WW2 (1974) that it was revealed that they had cracked Germany’s cipher machine enigma.
I’m telling you this for a reason because this information was not revealed until long after Turing had died (1954).
How would it feel to know you had done the one of the greatest things in the history of the world and you could not tell a soul about it? Would be very hard right?
Well it must have been much harder for Alan because not only was he a hero and could not tell anyone but he was ridiculed and put through trial for being a gay which was against the law then.
So not only was he the most important person in the country in my opinion but he could not let anyone know who, why or what he had done all while being put through their judicial process and through his death (suicide).
This speaks volumes of Alan to keep all of this in and I truly hope I can meet Alan someday to have a conversation with him.
How Alan Turing Re Defines The Term Alpha Male
We have spoken about what an alpha male is and it usually would be pointing to very specific types of men with that being stuff like well spoken, tough, demands respect and so on in that fashion.
People like Alan Turing are the reason that labels don’t work because if I was to compare Alan to all the things I described as alpha he wouldn’t match up.
However, he is probably the most alpha of them all because he faced ridicule, pushed himself through incredible odds and literally saved tens of millions of lives all while not telling people how great he was and how everyone should literally be thanking him.
To wrap this article up I appreciate you staying with me until the end and even though I do tell a lot about information you see in The Imitation Game move I still highly suggest you watch it if you haven’t seen it.