Name: The Life and Death of Alan Turing
Uploaded: 2021-05-20T10:03:58.000Z
Duration: 10 min 5 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

In World War II the Germans had the ultimate message coding

The second conditional

they were going to need to figure it out.

Fortunately, the Allies had an ultimate weapon

Turing basically invented the modern computer,

and though he never set foot on a battlefield

he was instrumental in helping end World War II.

You think Turing would have been treated like a hero for his

Today we're going to take a look at the heroic life

But before we get started, be sure to subscribe

And let us know in the comments below what

other famous unsung heroes you would like to hear about.

OK, let's crack the Enigma that was Alan Turing.

In the 1950s being homosexual in the United Kingdom

Despite knowing this Turing was fairly open

with a 19-year-old drifter named Arnold Murray.

His relationship emerged during the investigation

and Turing was arrested for gross indecency.

for well over a century, and it was the same statute

that Oscar Wilde had been tried under in the 1980s.

Turing was convicted and given an option he could go to prison

or be put on a treatment of female hormones.

Turing had been instrumental in helping win World War II,

but when it came to his indecency conviction

In the eyes of his society at the time being gay outweighed

While he avoided jail time he was put on probation

There were a lot of downsides to the hormone treatment.

Its goal was to make gay people straight,

but in reality it just made Turing grow breasts and become

as broken by his punishment, in reality he kept

In a more general sense the severity of Turing's punishment

provides a window into 1950s Britain's mindset.

In 1952 the same year Turing was arrested,

published an article calling gay men among other things freaks,

Turing put on a brave face but inside he was suffering.

Turing was found on June 8, 1954 by his housekeeper.

He had eaten half of an apple that was laced with cyanide.

logo with a bite taken out, but that legend it's not true.

That being said, there may actually be more to the story.

in the days and weeks leading up to his death.

been experimenting with cyanide in a personal lobotomy

They theorized that rather than having used the poison

he may have accidentally gotten some on it.

But that's not the end of the story either.

There is yet another even more interesting theory.

Some think that the British government was still

concerned that he would be forced to leak secrets because

of his then well-known sexual orientation,

After World War II was over, the Cold War started immediately.

Code breaking was still an important skill

and Turing was able to continue his work.

He was even paid the then huge sum of 5,000 pounds

a year to work for the government communications

The US and UK were working closely when it came

And America also had a harsh view of homosexuality.

The US thought there was a chance that any homosexual man

could be honey trapped and extorted to share information