Google honored renowned computer scientist Alan Turing on his 100th birth anniversary Saturday with a doodle that could leave even geeks racking their brains.
The Internet giant's latest doodle, an interactive virtual version of the Turing Machine, greeted visitors to its home page (www.google.com).
A link will appear on the doodle explaining to visitors that the doodle is for what would have been Turing's 100th birthday.
Clicking on that link would take the visitor to a Google Search Results page on Alan Turing.
An article on tech site Mashable said the doodle is a concept that helps explain how a computer central processing unit (CPU) thinks in binary, or 1s and 0s.
"The doodle is incredibly hard to figure out if you’re not a comp sci geek, so we hope it isn’t giving too much away to tell you the aim of the game is to spell out 'Google' in binary," it said.
A video on YouTube explained how to work the doodle.
Turing, born June 23, 1912 and died on June 7, 1954, was highly influential in the development of computer science, according to online encyclopedia Wikipedia.
He is credited for formalizing the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a significant role in the creation of the modern computer.
Also, he is considered the father of computer science and artificial intelligence.
Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS) at Bletchley Park, Britain's code-breaking center, during World War II.
He mapped out techniques to break German codes, including the bombe, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine.
After World War II, he worked at the National Physical Laboratory, where he created one of the first designs for a stored-program computer.
On the other hand, his homosexuality resulted in a criminal prosecution in 1952, at a time homosexual acts were still illegal in the United Kingdom.
On September 10, 2009, following an Internet campaign, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for the way in which Turing was treated after the war. — LBG, GMA News
source: gmanetwork.com
