It’s been announced that Alan Turing will be the new face on the £50 note. Turing, a mathmetician was a rather clever man who was one of the bigwigs at Bletchley Park working as a codebreaker. The early codebreaking systems were manual but later became more mechanical as Turing worked with Polish codebreakers to build the Enigma and other machines etc.
Little credit is given to this genius who committed suicide in 1954 so I reckon it’s about time recognition has been given. I wonder how many lives him and his staff saved during those dark days ?
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That’s good. The film about him was worth watching if you haven’t seen it…if only for the reminder of how far society has come. But awful to contemplate what he might have achieved if he hadn’t been persecuted for his sexuality.
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Which film is that Jane ? The tv film I watched was called Breaking The Code starring Derek Jacobi who was superb in the role.
The Imitation Game with Benedict Cumberbatch. A few years old now, but has remained in my mind (which is one of my measures for a film worth watching…). I’d forgotten about the earlier one, but not sure I ever watched it.
There was a film called Enigma with Kate Winslett from about 2001 ish which was shown a few weeks back. Not a great film for me but each to their own. Jacobi brilliantly portrayed Turing as gay with the problems which went with it for him.
Afternoon All
I consider Turing to be a genius that was totally betrayed by his country.
His contribution to the war effort has been totally ignored for several generations. He saved many, many lives and our country thanked him with chemical castration.
This is the least we can do to honour his memory.
Sorry to be a bit heavy, but have a great afternoon.
Andy
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Agree with you!
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The theory that he was murdered never quite goes away.
Turing was almost certainly instrumental in shortening the war and saving possibly millions of lives - he deserves much more honour and recognition than he receives (or received) - but the Polish mathematicians who provided the bedrock for his work (not to mention Enigma machines to work with) also deserve more recognition.
In fact without them and the experienced Polish pilots who fought on our side in the Battle of Britain the war might have turned out very differently.
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Bill Tutte and others were also amazing mathematicians but obviously they’re personal lives were not as tragic, thank goodness.
The UK was once described to me by an old friend as a good landlady but a very bad mother. Sums it up really.
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Yeah, a good land-lady collects the rent on time, deals promptly with repairs and replacements, but NEVER intrudes upon, interferes in, nor allows herself EVER to be drawn into the private lives of her tenants.
A rare breed.
Yes and a bad mother neglects the welfare and education of her children. Hence austerity, food banks, bad housing, underfunded health and education and escalated crime whilst spending the money on herself - offshore accounts, wealthy company owners, private schools and country estates.
Bad mother/ Tory mp - interchangeable really.
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Turing certainly worked with the Poles. They captured a complete Enigma and smuggled it to the UK. Had they not done so where would we have been?
Blimey, that’s amazing Guy.
Turing is the father of computing. He gave a theoretical foundation for the nature of computing embodied in what is know as the universal Turing machine. What he did at Bletchley was to turn his concept into an array of bulbs and switches which operated at lightning speed truncating many hours of manual work into a few minutes.
The problem was to expose contradictions. Feed in what they got from the intercepted German messages and if the machine signalled a contradiction it meant that what they fed was wrong. If it signalled OK then the code they had fed into the computer was right and it enabled them to backtrack to the enigma machine and thus find the code pattern for that day on the enigma . The Germans changed the settings on the enigma machine wheels every day.
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In this day and age in so many countries it’d still illegal.
Darren, I reckon you’ve pressed a wrong button, it’s easily done.
( you might like to move your latest post- Independent link- to the London Pride Thread 
We’re having a the wide-ranging discussion there about LGBT etc 
)
Sorry, not a direct link
Homosexuality was still a crime in Great Britain at the time, and Turing was convicted of “indecency.” He died from eating an apple laced with cyanide. He was only 41 years old.
I just wanted to know if any other countries has the same policies. I was shocked there are.
I think we are misunderstanding my language, sorry.
By clicking on "The Independent - 17 May 16 “The 74 countries etc” in your Post, I am taken directly the Independent webpage where the full article is showing - which is why I used the word “link”.
I still think it worth putting on the London Pride Thread, so shall do that myself.
Very sad about Turing, but I find his brilliance absolutely fascinating.
Interesting stuff Donald, thanks for that.
Any idea how the Poles helped out ?