[Closed] Alan Turing Channel 4 monday night

Apparently it is a really poor programme, made for people with the attention span of a fruit fly or kids.

...or so the radio told me. 29mins in.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017c8cz

Apparently it is a really poor programme, made for people with the attention span of a fruit fly or kids.

...or so the radio told me. 29mins in.

Should suit most of us then.

While Alan Turing did lay down quite a lot of theory about computing, it took a lot of effort from others, such as Tommy Flowers, to actually build something that worked. He had a big job in convincing those with the money that anything containing 4000+ valves had any chance of actually working - especially at a time when valves were in reasonably short supply.

Oh - and I'm not sure if project realised quite how well connected the two threads were. As part of his sentence for gross indecency (!), Alan Turing reluctantly agreed to a course of oestrogen; the idea being to reduce his likelihood to re-commit his offence. Mind bogglingly reckless to prescribe this, looking back with hindsight...

Rachel

[url= http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/11/alan-turing-my-hero-alan-garner ]My hero Alan Turing, by Alan Garner.[/url]

I'll give it a go.

Makes a change from "I'm a Celebrity Karaoke Dancing in the Jungle on Ice Brother" anyway

If Alan Turing knew his genius would ultimately end up being primarily used for pronography, MyFace and strangers arguing on forums he probably wouldn't have bothered ...

Flowers was obviously a bright bloke but was only using existing technology just on a bigger scale.

Alan Turing and Bill Tutte really were thinking outside the box and solving a problem people did not think was solvable. Working out how a Lorenz machine worked without even seeing one is pretty impressive.

Of course the work done at Bletchely was a team effort but I think Turing and Tutte deserve being recognised as pretty clever chaps 🙂

With no disrespect to the transgender thread, what has Alan Turing got to do with it?

Yes he was basically destroyed by his own country and I think only recently was postumously cleared of any crimes convicted of at the time. A Barbaric way to treat any human being, let alone someone of his genius.

With no disrespect to the transgender thread, what has Alan Turing got to do with it?

Somepeople found the thought of transgender a bit odd or obnoxious, so what about a chap who kiled himself because he was shunned by society, yet was capable of so much good.

Also we used a computer rand the technology he helped develop with his team, to have that discussion as opposed to face to face, where there would have probably been a few smacked faces.

Was Alan Turing transgender? I knew he'd been coerced into accepting a course of oestrogen 'treatment' as an alternative to a jail sentence for being a homosexual, but that's not really the same as being transgender is it?

Quite, ditch_jockey - There is no indication AT was trans and the fact that he was coerced into taking oestrogen, which must have been awful for him**, may well have led to the state of mind that drove him to suicide.

Dreadful way to treat any human being, regardless of what they did for the country.

**oestrogen has some really crazy effects on the body AND mind of people who take it. Even if you are trans, the effects take a lot of dealing with (crazy wide emotional 'bandwidth' for one, loss of strength for another, etc etc). For someone who is happy being a man and has every intention of staying that way, it must be hell.

(EDIT - and I need to shut up about this stuff now and go ride my bike instead - much more fun 🙂 )

Rachel

Couldn't they have entitled the documentary "Britain's Gayest Code-breaker"?

Might have got a few more viewers...?

I never said or intimated that AT was transgender, just that he was a very clever chap, who killed himself because people didnt accept him, just like some of the negative responces in the trans thread, who is to say we want have transgender areas of major cities, like we have in liverpool, manchester and Brighton for gay people.

I wonder what the apple logo have been without him, or if it would even have been called Apple

I hadn't realised they'd chemically castrated the man, I bet that was done in the name of bloody security, what a travesty.

It wasn't a bad programme, interesting to hear from fellow inmates from Bletchley Park.

As to Apple, it was Apricot who came first, pre dated Mac & Windows by two years, full windows desktop, infra red mouse and keyboard all in one construction, very tidy machine built in the then silicon valley in Scotland, another example of lack of investment in this country..

We've never appreciated our Innovators.

Did you lot watch the same program as me?

He didn't, apparently (assuming the program was accurate and given the sources quoted, no reason to think it wasn't), kill himself because he was "shunned by society" or because "people didn't accept him" but because the 'treatment' he was given caused irreparable damage to his body and mind.

Also, echoing a few others, this has nothing whatsoever do with being transgender, which there is no suggestion he was.

As to Apple, it was Apricot who came first, pre dated Mac & Windows by two years, full windows desktop, infra red mouse and keyboard all in one construction, very tidy machine built in the then silicon valley in Scotland, another example of lack of investment in this country..

I think Charlie was mentioning the symbol of an apple with a bite taken out of it, supposedly a symbol of how Turing killed himself, by eating an apple injected with cyanide (I think).

eerrmmm ... so he came up with "101100011000110001100 ..." but I seriously doubt he could build a machine up himself. One person effort, no. Group effort, yes.

Coming up with new idea is useless if no one is going to support it.

AdamW - Member
As to Apple, it was Apricot who came first, pre dated Mac & Windows by two years, full windows desktop, infra red mouse and keyboard all in one construction, very tidy machine built in the then silicon valley in Scotland, another example of lack of investment in this country..
I think Charlie was mentioning the symbol of an apple with a bite taken out of it, supposedly a symbol of how Turing killed himself, by eating an apple injected with cyanide (I think).

AdamW - Member
As to Apple, it was Apricot who came first, pre dated Mac & Windows by two years, full windows desktop, infra red mouse and keyboard all in one construction, very tidy machine built in the then silicon valley in Scotland, another example of lack of investment in this country..
I think Charlie was mentioning the symbol of an apple with a bite taken out of it, supposedly a symbol of how Turing killed himself, by eating an apple injected with cyanide (I think).

POSTED 2 HOURS AGO # REPORT-POST

The Alan Turing Statue in the peace gardens in manchester says that the apple he ate had nothing to do with the brand name of a computer called Apple.
Well worth a visit to pat him on the shoulder and say thanks for the invention of the computer that became the computer we know now 😀

Dunno about thanking him for the computer, he broke the Enigma Naval code, totally saved our arses in WW2 had he not done that there would have been no materials for either us the Yanks or the Russians to fight Hitler with, he and Mitchell (designer of the Spitfire) practically won the war for us or at the very least provided the tools with which to do it, thereby saving the free world.

We owe him a tremendous debt.

As said above, he's nothing to do with the name Apple nor their logo.

Honestly, the government should issue retrospective pardons for ANYONE convicted of homosexuality (or whatever ludicrous names they pretended were the crimes rather than being gay) rather than just holding up one person as a mistake because he happened to contribute a lot to the war effort. They all need pardoning. Every. Single. One.

my granddad Eddie was a merchant seaman during WW2 on the liverpool to America routes, I may not be here if it wasn't for Alan breaking the Lorentz code that gave us the edge over the U-boats

and devised a test for Artificial Intelligence that is still relevant to this day

and developed a mathmatical model to explain the relationship between spots and stripes on animals

Only on stw could this thread become a flame fest.

Shame on you.