1940s Team led by Alan Turing, English mathematician and pioneering computer scientist, develops a device to crack Nazi messages encoded using Enigma machines. Credited with creating the first “universal machine”, a mathematical tool equivalent to a digital computer. 1950s Development of digital networks by government-funded, largely defence-related, projects in the US, UK and France. Early networks transfer “packets” of information, laying foundation for email. 1960s Computer scientists and Pentagon employees create COBOL, or Common Business-Oriented Language, a computer code devised for utility companies to track usage but adopted quickly by