CLIP FILM THE IMITATION GAME PRODUCTION: USA/UK 2014, Black Bear Pictures DIRECTOR: Morten Tydlum CAST: Benedict Cumberbatch (Alan Turing), Keira Knightley (Joan Clarke), Charles Dance (Commander Alastair Denniston), Matthew Goode (Hugh Alexander). SYNOPSIS In 1951, the police investigate the mathematician Alan Turing after an apparent break-in at his home. During his interrogation Turing tells of his time working at Bletchey Park, which was the main centre where the Allied code-breaking work was done during the Second World War. When Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, Turing travelled to Bletchley Park. Under the direction of Commander Alastair Denniston, he joined the cryptography team of Hugh Alexander, who were trying to decrypt the Enigma machine, which the Nazis used to send coded messages. Turing was difficult to work with and considered his colleagues inferior; he worked alone to design a machine to decipher Enigma messages. After Commander Denniston refused to fund the construction of the machine, Turing wrote to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who put Turing in charge of the team and funded the machine. Turing placed a difficult crossword in newspapers to find people to work in the team; a Cambridge graduate, Joan Clarke, break-in: intrusione to decrypt: decriptare to fund: finanziare to grant: concedere in charge of: responsabile di indecency: oscenità to overhear: origliare pardon: grazia U-boat: sommergibile passed Turing s test and joined the team, the only woman among a group of men. Turing s machine, which he named Christopher, was constructed, but could not crack the Enigma code quickly enough. Denniston ordered it to be destroyed and Turing fired, but the other cryptographers said they would leave if Turing went. After overhearing a conversation with a female clerk about messages she received from the same German machine, Turing realised that Enigma always opened his first message with a standard text and that he could programme his machine to decode it. The machine, then, quickly decoded a message about an upcoming attack. Turing realised that if they suddenly attacked the U-boats, the Germans would understand Enigma was compromised and change the machinery. Therefore, Turing created a statistical model to indicate which warnings to send to avoid discovery. This helped the Allies win the war. After being accused of indecency for his homosexuality in 1952, Turing is condemned to chemical castration through hormonal therapy, which causes him physical and mental deterioration. The epilogue reveals that Turing committed suicide on June 7, 1954, a few months before his 42nd birthday. In 2013, Queen Elizabeth II granted Turing a posthumous Royal pardon, honouring his work which led to the development of the modern computer. BEFORE WATCHING 6 Read the synopsis and complete the table with the correct event for each year. 1912 1952 1939 1954 1951 2013 116 ELECTRONICS unit 2.4 Finali elettronica.indd 116 26/01/24 15:28