> But more importantly, in addition to doing that, he actually built one of the first actual computers. And he did that in order to break the German encryption

> But more importantly, in addition to doing that, he actually built one of the first actual computers. And he did that in order to break the German encryption in WW2. Not quite. He built the Bombe, which was not a computer. Elsewhere at Bletchley Park, other people built Colossus, one of the earliest electronic computing machines - but still not a computer, really, as it had no program. After the war, the first computer was built in Manchester, and although Turing was around, and it was clearly based in part on his ideas, my understanding is that he wasn't directly involved with building it. I think it's Turing's dual role in laying the theoretical foundation of computing and winning World War 2 that made him famous. I don't think his tragic death has made him more famous; if anything, it delayed his fame - imagine how well-known he would have been if he'd lived on into the computer age! Not a BBC documentary would go by without photos of Turing looking seriously at an ICL 2900, Turing sat at a BBC Model B, an elderly Turing and a thirtysomething Tim Berners-Lee mugging at the camera, etc.