Chapter 1104: Changing the World

“Stabilizer One, ready. Power supply is stable, all systems normal!” An engineer pushed up the glasses on his nose, looked at the instrument panel in front of him, and loudly reported what he saw.

“Stabilizer Two, all normal! Voltage is exceptionally stable, no fluctuations…” Another staff member reported his status. This experiment involved so much that even this typically steady man couldn’t help but wipe the sweat from his forehead.

Several military generals and a deputy prime minister in charge of the plan stood in the observation seats, tense expressions on their faces. If this experiment succeeded, Germany would once again be at the forefront of the world, the first nation to master this heaven-defying technology.

They couldn’t help but be nervous. This technology could lead the era into a new epoch. The nation that mastered it first would, relying on the experience and innovation gained, have the ability to become the great nation leading the world. What irked them, however, was that this project wasn’t entirely German; it included many scientists from France, Italy, Britain, and Poland.

“Equipment is running normally. I will input the command, and this machine is about to do something unprecedentedly great.” The lead British scientist was not a tall man, but in this laboratory, his status was almost indistinguishable from Akado’s. The Third Reich’s codename for him was “God,” and he was, in fact, engaged in the work of creating a god.

This machine, so huge it occupied nearly sixty percent of the entire laboratory, began to hum. The reels on the machine began to spin, though not at a high speed. As it started working, everyone watching from the sidelines felt their hearts jump into their throats.

A high-pitched screeching sound accompanied the machine’s dull, low hum. On the operating interface facing everyone, a long, thin strip of white paper began to emerge from a narrow slot. As this long paper strip was continuously spat out, the sharp sound never ceased.

“Is this thing really as powerful as the Führer claimed?” a military general turned his head to ask the general accompanying him, who specialized in this field. The man he asked wore the rank of Major General, but he looked to be only in his thirties or forties.

Hearing the General’s question, the Major General answered directly: “Sir, the help this machine provides cannot be compared to manpower or anything else. As long as this thing can work properly, everything we know is about to enter a new century.”

“This is an electronic tube (vacuum tube) computer. It can perform a massive number of calculations in place of a human, at a speed measured in per second.” This Wehrmacht Major General had been in charge of the project, and in the process, he had gradually come to understand the significance of this great invention for the entire war.

“Calculations? What do calculations have to do with war?” The General frowned, then added, “Perhaps the logistics department could use it for some statistical operations, but considering the electricity this thing consumes, and our budget… I would rather hire 20 accountants than replace them with this clumsy machine.”

“Sir, 20 accountants cannot perform 6,700 calculations per second.” The British expert, who had just been tinkering with the machine and now walked over with a dozen German scientists, heard the General’s words and said with a smile, “And you cannot guarantee those 6,700 calculations are absolutely correct. But my machine can!”

If you rely on manpower, errors will inevitably occur during complex calculations. These errors accumulate and can destroy the result of a large-scale computation. Tens of thousands of calculations are time-consuming and labor-intensive, and the result is not even guaranteed to be accurate. This is what restricts the development and progress of human civilization.

But this computer is different. It can calculate according to pre-defined rules, and the values it obtains are absolutely correct. Although there are many “problems” it cannot compute or that will disrupt its programming, under its set program, it will absolutely not make a mistake. This alone is enough to make people value this thing’s future.

“Six-thousand-seven-hundred calculations… per second?” The German General couldn’t believe his ears. While he didn’t grasp the complexity of the calculations, he understood exactly what a number like 6,700 meant.

This meant that if he gathered three full-strength infantry regiments and had them all drop prone in a single second—just imagining that scene was grand enough. And so the General, even more amazed, looked at the massive machine, with only a “heh heh” of wonder left in his throat.

“Mr. Turing, can this machine truly perform such complex calculations smoothly?” The Major General, who had just been boasting, was clearly less confident in front of the real expert. So, while the General beside him was still marveling, he quietly asked the British scientist at his side, Mr. Turing.

“If it were just me, of course, completing this masterpiece would be impossible. But your scientists had their own research in this area, and many parts gave me great inspiration. For example, the use of vacuum tubes solved many problems.” Turing, when it came to his profession, became eloquent.

When he was first brought to Germany from Britain by German special forces, he couldn’t believe that there was a group of people in the world who knew more about artificial intelligence and computer science than he did. But when he saw the laboratory Akado had prepared for him, and those renowned German scientists, he was completely won over by the Germans’ foresight.

Germany’s research in electronic computers was not in the least inferior to Britain’s, and in terms of practical operation and prototype construction, they were far ahead. And so Turing had immediately integrated into this grand plan, and in the end, had made this German computer truly work.

After more than a year of working day and night, the German scientists, along with British and French scientists like Turing, had finally produced a viable solution, turning the Führer’s near god-making plan into a reality.

“The computer is running normally! It’s working steadily! My God! It’s calculating according to the program I designed! It’s alive! It’s alive!” a German scientist shouted, bending down to kiss the control panel in front of him. In the lab, countless others were just as moved.

To give a machine life—what a grand proposition! Of course, people living today know that even in 2016, humans had not truly given life to a machine. AlphaGo, which could think and summarize, was still stuck at the stage of playing Go… But in 1939, this group of scientists, who had been striving for this goal, were already moved to tears by this small success.

In the eyes of Turing, in the eyes of this group of fanatical German scientists, perhaps in ten, perhaps in twenty years, humanity would surpass the evolution of the past several thousand years and complete a shocking leap forward. They didn’t think they were too far ahead, because they had just, in this moment, completed the first super-computation in human history.

“What is it doing?” The General, still in shock, frowned and suddenly asked Turing, “You all say it’s calculating. So, what complex problem is it using to test its calculations right now?”

Hearing the General’s question, the Major General in charge of the project finally had a chance to show off. He smiled, intercepted the question, and boasted to the General: “Before, the intelligence department, based on intercepted coded telegrams between the British and Americans, broke their codes. You know, in a university’s mathematics department, 560 math experts all worked day and night on this project… They took two months to get a result. This computer is verifying that calculation.”

“My God! It can break enemy codes?” The General once again looked in terror at the massive machine, which was still working steadily. The room was filled with a low humming sound, but to his ears, it was as deafening as thunder.

“In theory, it can only calculate, but it can help people perform calculations, shortening the time needed to break codes,” Turing said proudly to the German General. “It can also calculate ballistics… or anything else we need it to. Of course, we will continue to improve this, to make it calculate 10,000 times per second, 100,000 times, all the way to 1 million or even 10 million times.”

If Akado were standing here, he would have burst out laughing, because in his original era, a single laptop computer could achieve the data Turing was boasting about. But now, everyone present was shocked by these numbers. One million times per second? What kind of transcendent concept was that?

“The result is out!” An assistant over there, holding a long paper strip, reported loudly, “The computer shows that our original calculation had three logical contradictions. The rest of the results match.”

“Very good! Barring any surprises, gentlemen,” the Major General in charge of the project announced, his voice trembling with excitement, “We… have just broken the codes the British are currently using!”

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