Google marks Alan Turing's 100th birthday with interactive Doodle

Google has launched an Alan Turing interactive Doodle on its homepage to mark the 100th birthday of the computer science legend.

The Doodle is a basic interpretation of the Turing Machine, a hypothetical computing model that Turing proposed in 1936. The machine, he suggested, would be fed with a long piece of tape inscribed with single-character instructions which it would then read and process, moving the tape back and forth according to the instructions given using an algorithm.

The notion was considered groundbreaking by Turing's peers -- up until this point, a machine that could react dynamically to multiple instructions by storing data had not been imagined.

Google's interpretation gives users the opportunity to alter the flow of commands through a piece of "tape", then play out their choice to see if they have processed the information correctly. The goal is to get the binary numbers to match the sequence shown in a small box above the tape, with an aggressive-looking red symbol cropping up every time a user fails a sequence. Those that don't want to face that humiliation can check out the YouTube cheat below, though Turing will be a little less proud of this technology-savvy generation if we can't fly solo on this one.

Read more: Celebrating Alan Turing's centenary

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