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Bright Lives English
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Alan Turing: The Codebreaker Who Imagined the Computer

Level B2 (Upper intermediate) · Watch the video and do the online quiz at https://brightlivesenglish.com/lessons/alan-turing-codebreaker/

A Match the words to their meanings

  1. codebreaker (noun)
  2. decipher (verb)
  3. universal (adjective)
  4. pardon (noun)
  5. unjust (adjective)
  6. codebreaking (noun)
  7. wartime (noun / adjective)
  8. persecution (noun)
  1. the time when a country is at war
  2. working for or including everything or everyone, not just one thing
  3. someone who tries to understand secret messages without knowing the key
  4. the work of finding out what secret codes mean
  5. cruel, unfair treatment of people because of who they are or what they believe
  6. not fair, especially when a law or a powerful person treats someone badly (opposite: just)
  7. to change secret or unclear writing into words you can read (past: deciphered)
  8. an official decision to forgive someone for a crime

B Complete the sentences from the story

unjust · wartime · codebreakers · Codebreaking · persecution · deciphered · pardon · universal

  1. His work was a secret.
  2. He was found guilty under an law.
  3. at Bletchley Park stayed secret for about thirty years.
  4. Many gay men faced under the old laws.
  5. He imagined a machine.
  6. They thousands of enemy messages.
  7. He was given a royal .
  8. He joined a secret team of .

C Did you understand?

  1. What did Turing imagine in 1936?
    1. A faster bicycle
    2. A new kind of radio
    3. A universal machine that could do any calculation
    4. A secret code for the army
  2. Alan Turing took the train to his new school in 1926.True / False
  3. How often did the Enigma settings change?
    1. Every week
    2. Every night at midnight
    3. Every month
    4. Once a year
  4. What did Churchill write back to the codebreakers?
    1. Wait until next year
    2. Ask someone else
    3. The war is over
    4. Action this day
  5. In 2013, Turing was given a royal pardon.True / False
  6. Whose earlier work helped Turing design the Bombe?
    1. Winston Churchill's
    2. Codebreakers from Poland
    3. His teachers at school
    4. American engineers

D Put the words in order

  1. would / nobody / he / at / him / blamed / had / If / have / stayed / home,

E Grammar: If + had + past participle, … would / might have + past participle

We use it for the third conditional: imagining a past that did not happen, and its result. If + had / hadn't + past participle · would / might have + past participle · might have is less sure than would have

Example from the story: If the code hadn't been broken, the war might have lasted longer.

  1. If he at home, nobody would have blamed him. (had stayed / stayed / would stay)
  2. If the code hadn't been broken, the war might longer. (have lasted / lasted / has lasted)
  3. If he had been born later, he have been punished. (would not / did not / had not)

F Your turn

Retell Alan Turing's story in 5–6 sentences. Use at least three words from exercise A.

Transcript

Every night at midnight, the enemy changed its secret code.

Breaking it by hand seemed impossible.

One shy young man believed a machine could do it.

But would it work in time?

This is the story of Alan Turing.

Welcome to brightlivesenglish.com, where we teach real English using real-life stories.

Codebreaker. A codebreaker is someone who tries to understand secret messages without knowing the key.

He joined a secret team of codebreakers.

Decipher. To decipher a message means to change secret writing into words you can read.

The past is deciphered.

They deciphered thousands of enemy messages.

Universal. Something universal works for everything or everyone, not just for one thing.

He imagined a universal machine.

Pardon. A pardon is an official decision to forgive someone for a crime.

Royal means from the king or queen.

He was given a royal pardon.

Unjust. Unjust means not fair, especially when a law or a powerful person treats someone badly.

The opposite is just.

He was found guilty under an unjust law.

Now, one pattern: the third conditional.

It imagines a past that did not happen.

The code was broken, so the war was shorter.

If the code hadn't been broken, the war might have lasted longer.

Ready? Let's begin.

Alan Turing was born in London in 1912.

As a boy, he loved numbers and science experiments.

In 1926, he was ready to start at a new school.

But there was a problem.

A national strike had stopped all the trains.

Alan was only thirteen.

So he got on his bicycle and rode about a hundred kilometres, alone.

If he had stayed at home, nobody would have blamed him.

In 1936, he imagined a universal machine.

It could read instructions and follow them, one step at a time.

With the right instructions, it could do any calculation.

Modern computers are built on this idea.

In 1939, war began, and Turing joined a secret team of codebreakers at Bletchley Park.

The German forces used a machine called Enigma.

Every night at midnight, its settings changed.

There were about 159 million million million possible settings.

No person could check them all by hand.

And every night, the work started again from zero.

So Turing designed a new machine, building on earlier work by codebreakers from Poland.

It was big, noisy and full of turning drums.

They called it the Bombe.

In 1940, they switched it on.

Would it work?

It did. The Bombe found the day's settings in hours.

Soon, they deciphered thousands of enemy messages.

Some showed where enemy submarines were waiting.

If the code hadn't been broken, the war might have lasted longer.

But they needed more staff.

In 1941, Turing and three colleagues wrote directly to Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Churchill wrote back: action this day.

Make sure they have all they want.

When the war ended in 1945, the work stayed secret.

Some historians believe it shortened the war by about two years.

But Turing could not tell anyone what he had done.

Instead, he began to design real computers.

In 1950, he asked a question people still ask today: can machines think?

He suggested a test.

If you chat with a machine and can't tell it's a machine, is it thinking?

Today, we call it the Turing test.

In Britain at that time, relationships between men were a crime.

In 1952, Turing, who was gay, was found guilty under an unjust law.

If he had been born a few decades later, he would not have been punished.

He died in 1954, at only forty-one.

In 2013, he was given a royal pardon.

And in 2021, his face appeared on the British fifty-pound note, next to drawings of his machines.

Let's review. He joined a secret team of codebreakers.

They deciphered thousands of enemy messages.

He imagined a universal machine.

He was given a royal pardon.

He was found guilty under an unjust law.

And remember: if the code hadn't been broken, the war might have lasted longer.

Turing's story teaches us: the world needs people who think differently.

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Answer key

A. 1c 2g 3b 4h 5f 6d 7a 8e

B. 1 wartime · 2 unjust · 3 Codebreaking · 4 persecution · 5 universal · 6 deciphered · 7 pardon · 8 codebreakers

C. 1 c · 2 False · 3 b · 4 d · 5 True · 6 b

D. 1 If he had stayed at home, nobody would have blamed him.

E. 1 had stayed · 2 have lasted · 3 would not