Mind-Blowing Facts About Alan Turing You Didn't Know 🤯

During his time at university, Turing’s homosexuality became a definitive part of his identity, and fellow mathematician James Atkins became his occasional lover. In 1939, he took up a full-time role at Bletchley Park, carrying out top secret work with his Hut 8 team deciphering the military codes used by Germany and its allies. His main focus was in cracking the ‘Enigma’ code. During the war, the German army used an Enigma enciphering machine to send messages securely. The machine worked by entering letters on a typewriter-like keyboard, then encoding them through a series of rotating dials to a light board, which showed the coded equivalents – capable of generating almost 159 quintillion permutations. Alan Turing’s code-breaking work is credited with shortening the war by at least two years, helping result in the Allied victory and saving an estimated 14 million lives.