14 Computing Machinery and Intelligence (1950)

Alan Turing started intermittent work with British intelligence on codebreaking not long after publication of "On Computable Numbers" (see chapter 6 for more on Turing's life). After the UK declared war on Germany, he began full time work at Bletchley Park, the wartime center of British intelligence. There he led an ultimately successful effort to crack the Enigma code that was being used for communications between the German command and ships and troops. Like all Bletchley Park work, it remained classified and unpublished for decades, but a consensus now exists that Turing's work was essential to the war effort and may have shortened the war significantly. Indeed, Britain recognized him for his service in 1946.