You can carry a laptop to school,

but it wasn’t always that way.

The first computers were huge,

way back in the day.

They were used to break secret codes,

so we’d know the enemy’s plans.

And after the war was over,

they were soon in everyone’s hands.

We take them for granted today,

but once they didn’t exist.

If we didn’t have them now,

do you think they would be missed?

Teacher’s note: During the Second World War, Alan Turing (1912—1954) was a code breaker who worked in Hut 8 at Bletchley Park in England.  Pictured above is a bombe, the electromechanical machine which cracked the enemy’s Enigma code.  Turing’s pioneering work in computer technology sped the development of today’s computers.  It is estimated that his code breaking computer science shortened the war in Europe by more than two years and saved over 14 million lives.