Turing also searched for a way to break into the torrent of messages suddenly emanating from a new, and much more sophisticated, German cipher machine. The British codenamed the new machine Tunny.

Two researchers in the Netherlands helmed the construction of a LEGO Turing machine, a quirky manifestation of the classic computer science concept first devised by Alan Turing in 1936.

This concept, also known as the Turing machine, is considered the basis for the modern theory of computation. In 1936, Turing went to Princeton University in America, returning to England in 1938.

A small subset of these Turing machines are known as Universal Turing machines; they are capable of solving any computational problem known.

In honor of Alan Turing's hundredth birthday, Davy Landman, Jereon van den Bos, and Paul Klint built a Turning Machine out of LEGOS. And if you like, you can build one too.

How Alan Turing found machine thinking in the human mind Turing's youthful bid for fame proved a great mathematician wrong – and accidentally created the modern computer By Jonathon Keats 29 ...