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Welcome to Legacy and the third episode of our series on Alan Turing.

We left you in the last episode, with Turing having made a huge contribution to the Allied War effort with his code-breaking genius. Some have

suggested that the efforts of those at Bletchley Park, to which Turing was central, shortened the

war by at least two years and saved millions of lives. But except for a tiny group of people,

no one knows this in the 1950s. Turing and those who worked with him at

Bletchley Park are still sworn to secrecy under the Official Secrets Act, and it will take another

30 years before they are allowed to share their stories, which unfortunately will be too late for

Turing, as we will find out. Back in the immediate post-war period though, some of Turing's ideas do become

public knowledge, even if people don't necessarily make the connection with the man himself.

And that's because the age of the modern computer has started.

August 1951, Science Museum, London.

Alan and his old colleagues from Cambridge follow the guided route around the museum,

alongside hundreds of other visitors here to see the new technology exhibits as part of the festival of Britain.

They weave their way around banners promoting the worlds of atoms and molecules,

past a couple of robotic tortoises spinning round in circles, and threw more crowds towards the

biggest exhibition, Pheranti's Nimrod. Farranti is the company that made the Manchester computer, and Alan wants to see how they've devised

this world first. A computer game. The vast grey computer looks like something you might see in a

power station. It stands six feet tall on a raised platform behind white railings. There is a console

...