Alan Turing, Codebreaker
Docudrama "Codebreaker" on Yesterday Channel based Alan Turing's Writings, Historical Records and accounts of those who knew him.
October 1952
Franz Greenbaum was Turing's Physchiatrist who fled just before WW2 because he was a German born Jew.
His Daughters, Maria Summerscale and Barbara Maher recollect that "He turned up in the most extraordinary clothes when he came, it was as though he'd been out of a rag-bag". They mention in the interview that their father accepting Homosexualality far out during that time.
Turing's Older brother (John) had Dermot and he says that both brothers "Were sons of the empire, their father was in the Indian civil service, and with his wife being pregnant with Alan, they're sent back to England with a foster family and they don't see their parents again until his Father serves again in a years' time"
He suspects this is why Alan found it easy to disappear into his own world because of this.
1926 Sherbourne boarding School
Dorset, England
Alan age fourteen, went to this school and the records of achievement show he had "A good understanding of it and great powers of reasoning, and should do well if he can quicken up a little, to improve his style."
I find it funny that none of his teachers recognised his talent with Maths early on, but since he wasn't recognised until recently when he was pardoned this year. Although, I know what it is to not be recognised for something you are knowledgeable about or similar...?
On 11th of April 1930 Alan read the "Alice in Wonderland" books, and "The Game of Logic" signifying that now around 18 years old he still had this compartmentalisation of another world in his mind but also the practicality of what his teachers called "Style" some four years' earlier.
His mother drew a picture called "Hockey or Watching the Daisies Grow" where Alan ignores that game and instead, he's shown to have intensely studied the daisies near him.
This shows again how his abilities form and how he was a very solitary person early on because he wasn't someone who thrived in Social situations and despite being athletic, preferred running. A single person sport.
He had a very great friend at school, Christopher Morcom who seemed more important to Alan than anyone else and it is suggested that he was quite in love with him, as a sort of adolescent dream that would be a significant part of his future. Perhaps he thought of Morcom as a hero; Somone to look up to.
Turing diary entries reveal that although Morcom was in a different house, and it was forbidden to fraternise with other houses outside of studying they met in the library once on Wednesdays where Christopher would playfully tease Alan over his sloppy handwriting. Turing loved how the boy treated him and saw him a friend. "He made me want to be good, change my standards... Mistakes I made, careless errors. I didn't care about his example, I cared about what I was in his eyes. More so than I was in my own."
Christopher was an emotional and interlectual link for Alan which was very deep and significant because matched him in Science, gifts and Curiousity. Leading them to study Astronomy together. More than friends, there was a great intimacy between them but, completely innocent of sexuality.
"I think if you find a person like that; and I don't think everybody finds one. In fact I think it's totally rare, then all you thought before, all your plans for yourself and you realise they were just filling a gap. It was just something for you to do while you were waiting for this person and everything you want to be is something for him, not yourself. There is a drawback however, finding such a person makes everybody else appear so ordinary. And if anything happens to him you've got nothing but to return to the ordinary world; a kind of isolation that never existed before."
December 1st just beginning 1929
Christopher and Alan where sent to Cambridge University together, for the scholarship examinations and at that time they both want to succeed so that they could study together there.
Unknowingly, a short while after the entrance examinations where done, Alan was to lose his best friend on Febuary 13th 1930, because of suffering from Tuberculosis all his life.
Turing was bowled over with grief.
Writing to Morcom's mother on the 20 Febuary, 1930 about the death and sharing the worship of her son made it easier, because she understood how Alan had loved him in more than one way.
He asked for a snapshot and she sent him one.
" During the last year I worked with him continually, and I am sure I couldn't have found a companion so brilliant and yet so charming and unconceited, I regarded my interest in my work something to be shared with him and I think he felt a little the same about me. I know that I must put as much energy in my work as if he were alive, because that is what he'd like me to do.
Yours Sincerely, Alan Turing"
This worried Alan's mother because he insisted that Morcom was still there with him, working with him, helping Turing even more steadily, after his death.
In memory of Chris's death, Turing was determined to go to Cambridge, he ended up with a scholarship to King's College. Where he wrote "On Computeable Numbers, With An Application to the EtsheidungsProblem" Recieved 28th May, 1936 and read November 12th.
Not even Turing himself knew the significance of the paper or the impact it was going to have.
Anything that "Computes" uses what's in that paper making Turing one of the greatest scientists of the 20th Century.
The word "Computer" back then meant a person who calculates. Normally, a woman at a desktop calculator who calculated equations and wrote them down on cards to pass down a supervisor and the end of the room.
Turing wanted to know if you could entirely automate the process, and this was the Theory that proved a "Yes".
To solve this he made a construction called "The Universal Machine" and it changed the way people thought about Calculation and Computation in a very different, fundamental way. The machine was only hypothetical shifting zeros between ones on a spool but it is like every computer that way it processes numbers with instructions as anything can be written in binary code.
It's the basis or this in every computer of varying sorts.
1939 was the time where Turing was asked to work at Bletchly park to decode enigma machine messages.
Joan Clarke a rare woman who was a Mathmatician but as she was a woman she was paid less for her parts of the brilliant work. Turing admired perhaps as much as his friend, Christopher that he proposed to her and she agreed upon which he told her of his homosexuality and she surprised him by not being against it at all.
At the time it was quite common for anyone Homosexual or Bisexual to take a stab at Hetrosexuality and propose to the opposite sex, but Turing himself didn't marry her. He came to a point which was at the back of his mind given what any man was expected of in the late 1930's- and refused because it wouldn't have worked for him.
His awareness was quite unheard of at the time, but because of his Honesty he didn't break her heart like other men did, leading secret lives or eventually divorcing because they could bear to lie anymore.
Asa Briggs is somone who worked at Bletchley Park and tell us about his manner " a very eccentric person would wear a gas mask because he suffered from hay fever, wore striped pyjamas under his labcoat and this is the most eccentric, he didn't trust Banks so he bought Silver Ingots and planted them around the park, only problem is he couldn't remember where he put them and many of them haven't been found!"
Being different didn't matter at Bletchly; just that you helped defeat the Germans.
Cribs helped as they are code eg. Germans used to talk about the weather so that was one. Gordon Welchman helped Turing build the Bombe machines which un-coded the messages in minutes, apart from the Navy because the Naval system Traffic was even more complex but it was broken eventually.
Acknowledging and thanking Turing was skipped as if it weren't monumental and only came out as Top secret Ultra recently after his pardon.
He was treated abismally by his own government, 1945 was when the first computer he built using the previous maths from his paper for the Entschidungsoblem was installed in Manchester University where he worked in their Maths department in 1948. The computer ran its first program June 1948.
The father of AI-Artifical intelligence to prove that Morcom's work wasn't in vain.
"If a computer can convince you it's intelligent, who can tell you it's not?"
The National Telegraph became interested in AI and the difference between the two. Lives, careers like humans almost real humanity like us.
Arnold Murray a nineteen year old, started this misfortune again which dogged Alan and along with other Hingis, eventually led to his arrest and choice between Chemical Castration or inprisonment because Homosexuality was illegal in public or private.
Turing believed that they brought each others' reputations down through the gutters and Alan thought he'd stole which was true until he was burgled, A watch belonging to his Father went missing. So he confronted Alan who told he wasn't involved and told him of Harry a friend who wouldn't take ,only unless is was dressed up like a loan, and got chatting to him about Alan's achievements and the burglary happened. Turing went to the the police believing the system would help him, a very Nëive move which complicated his problem.
Turing later wrote to another friend, Norman Routledge in Febuary 1952 telling him that he was in trouble like he always thought he might do because of his Homosexuality 10:1 against him emerging a different man from the whole thing, a public indecency, to have "Organo-therapic treatment" to remove testosterone from his body with Stylboestrol Tablets, a synthetic version of the Female sex hormone Estrogen. Lastly he was implanted with it in his thigh. Part of the reason Turing agreed was because he was informed it was "Reversible" and seemed slightly less harder than Prison.
In Spring 1953, six months visiting Dr. Greenbaum and he told him Mathmatical Biology, Morphogenisis why cells become wings, or Stripes on a tiger.
Botany and biology had always intrested him as a child and Greenbaum became Turing's friend and so much more almost like a family member. Kejll was a man in Norway whom Turing kissed drunkenly under a flag post and later tried to visit but, being chased over North England and deterred from visiting Turing he went home.
At the time Homosexal tendencies seemed weak, still in the shadow of war and it was the public's mind that assumed Turing fit that part due to his Top Secret work at Bletchly Park that this was a reason he'd go rogue.
It was medically proven that the Chemicals he'd been taking to Castrate him had altered his thinking, his ability to concentrate and muddle his brain because of the lack of Testosterone, Scientifical research not knowing that we need both Testosterone and Estrogen to function properly.
He wrote to Robin Gandy another friend of his about the changes and in particular his dismay at not being able to concentrate at all with what he was supposed to be doing and instead enverything else, presently.
April 1953 is when Turing's Estrogen treatment finished and he expected it to reverse quickly and in theory it should work but, not like Turing had expected. An intangible court ordered fate.
He couldn't take it anymore his reasoning to ride through failiaure and in a bid to cheer him Greenbaum's family invited Turing to Blackpool on holiday with them.
At the fair he enjoyed on the pier until he went to have his fortune read, emerging ashen-faced, horrified at whatever had happened.
June 1954
Allan tells Greenbaum about perhaps what the fortune teller said by explaining how different people see the world. Like bees seeing Ultra-Violet light and wouldn't divulge anymore. A sense of despair must have envaded him after all ? Take away his private dreams, and kill what mattered.
It's suggested that he used a Poisoned apple and electricity to kill himself although it's not proven.
June 8th, Wednesday 1954
Alan Mathias Turing was found dead by his housekeeper reported as Cynide poisoning and classed as Suicide, supposedly, with an apple on the bedside table but we are never told in history at all if it was ever true or not.
In September 2009, The British Government apologised for the way Alan Turing was Treated, saying "We're sorry. You deserved so much better." He was Pardoned December 24th 2014, By the queen, David Cameron and greats like Steven Hawking.
October 1952
Franz Greenbaum was Turing's Physchiatrist who fled just before WW2 because he was a German born Jew.
His Daughters, Maria Summerscale and Barbara Maher recollect that "He turned up in the most extraordinary clothes when he came, it was as though he'd been out of a rag-bag". They mention in the interview that their father accepting Homosexualality far out during that time.
Turing's Older brother (John) had Dermot and he says that both brothers "Were sons of the empire, their father was in the Indian civil service, and with his wife being pregnant with Alan, they're sent back to England with a foster family and they don't see their parents again until his Father serves again in a years' time"
He suspects this is why Alan found it easy to disappear into his own world because of this.
1926 Sherbourne boarding School
Dorset, England
Alan age fourteen, went to this school and the records of achievement show he had "A good understanding of it and great powers of reasoning, and should do well if he can quicken up a little, to improve his style."
I find it funny that none of his teachers recognised his talent with Maths early on, but since he wasn't recognised until recently when he was pardoned this year. Although, I know what it is to not be recognised for something you are knowledgeable about or similar...?
On 11th of April 1930 Alan read the "Alice in Wonderland" books, and "The Game of Logic" signifying that now around 18 years old he still had this compartmentalisation of another world in his mind but also the practicality of what his teachers called "Style" some four years' earlier.
His mother drew a picture called "Hockey or Watching the Daisies Grow" where Alan ignores that game and instead, he's shown to have intensely studied the daisies near him.
This shows again how his abilities form and how he was a very solitary person early on because he wasn't someone who thrived in Social situations and despite being athletic, preferred running. A single person sport.
He had a very great friend at school, Christopher Morcom who seemed more important to Alan than anyone else and it is suggested that he was quite in love with him, as a sort of adolescent dream that would be a significant part of his future. Perhaps he thought of Morcom as a hero; Somone to look up to.
Turing diary entries reveal that although Morcom was in a different house, and it was forbidden to fraternise with other houses outside of studying they met in the library once on Wednesdays where Christopher would playfully tease Alan over his sloppy handwriting. Turing loved how the boy treated him and saw him a friend. "He made me want to be good, change my standards... Mistakes I made, careless errors. I didn't care about his example, I cared about what I was in his eyes. More so than I was in my own."
Christopher was an emotional and interlectual link for Alan which was very deep and significant because matched him in Science, gifts and Curiousity. Leading them to study Astronomy together. More than friends, there was a great intimacy between them but, completely innocent of sexuality.
"I think if you find a person like that; and I don't think everybody finds one. In fact I think it's totally rare, then all you thought before, all your plans for yourself and you realise they were just filling a gap. It was just something for you to do while you were waiting for this person and everything you want to be is something for him, not yourself. There is a drawback however, finding such a person makes everybody else appear so ordinary. And if anything happens to him you've got nothing but to return to the ordinary world; a kind of isolation that never existed before."
December 1st just beginning 1929
Christopher and Alan where sent to Cambridge University together, for the scholarship examinations and at that time they both want to succeed so that they could study together there.
Unknowingly, a short while after the entrance examinations where done, Alan was to lose his best friend on Febuary 13th 1930, because of suffering from Tuberculosis all his life.
Turing was bowled over with grief.
Writing to Morcom's mother on the 20 Febuary, 1930 about the death and sharing the worship of her son made it easier, because she understood how Alan had loved him in more than one way.
He asked for a snapshot and she sent him one.
" During the last year I worked with him continually, and I am sure I couldn't have found a companion so brilliant and yet so charming and unconceited, I regarded my interest in my work something to be shared with him and I think he felt a little the same about me. I know that I must put as much energy in my work as if he were alive, because that is what he'd like me to do.
Yours Sincerely, Alan Turing"
This worried Alan's mother because he insisted that Morcom was still there with him, working with him, helping Turing even more steadily, after his death.
In memory of Chris's death, Turing was determined to go to Cambridge, he ended up with a scholarship to King's College. Where he wrote "On Computeable Numbers, With An Application to the EtsheidungsProblem" Recieved 28th May, 1936 and read November 12th.
Not even Turing himself knew the significance of the paper or the impact it was going to have.
Anything that "Computes" uses what's in that paper making Turing one of the greatest scientists of the 20th Century.
The word "Computer" back then meant a person who calculates. Normally, a woman at a desktop calculator who calculated equations and wrote them down on cards to pass down a supervisor and the end of the room.
Turing wanted to know if you could entirely automate the process, and this was the Theory that proved a "Yes".
To solve this he made a construction called "The Universal Machine" and it changed the way people thought about Calculation and Computation in a very different, fundamental way. The machine was only hypothetical shifting zeros between ones on a spool but it is like every computer that way it processes numbers with instructions as anything can be written in binary code.
It's the basis or this in every computer of varying sorts.
1939 was the time where Turing was asked to work at Bletchly park to decode enigma machine messages.
Joan Clarke a rare woman who was a Mathmatician but as she was a woman she was paid less for her parts of the brilliant work. Turing admired perhaps as much as his friend, Christopher that he proposed to her and she agreed upon which he told her of his homosexuality and she surprised him by not being against it at all.
At the time it was quite common for anyone Homosexual or Bisexual to take a stab at Hetrosexuality and propose to the opposite sex, but Turing himself didn't marry her. He came to a point which was at the back of his mind given what any man was expected of in the late 1930's- and refused because it wouldn't have worked for him.
His awareness was quite unheard of at the time, but because of his Honesty he didn't break her heart like other men did, leading secret lives or eventually divorcing because they could bear to lie anymore.
Asa Briggs is somone who worked at Bletchley Park and tell us about his manner " a very eccentric person would wear a gas mask because he suffered from hay fever, wore striped pyjamas under his labcoat and this is the most eccentric, he didn't trust Banks so he bought Silver Ingots and planted them around the park, only problem is he couldn't remember where he put them and many of them haven't been found!"
Being different didn't matter at Bletchly; just that you helped defeat the Germans.
Cribs helped as they are code eg. Germans used to talk about the weather so that was one. Gordon Welchman helped Turing build the Bombe machines which un-coded the messages in minutes, apart from the Navy because the Naval system Traffic was even more complex but it was broken eventually.
Acknowledging and thanking Turing was skipped as if it weren't monumental and only came out as Top secret Ultra recently after his pardon.
He was treated abismally by his own government, 1945 was when the first computer he built using the previous maths from his paper for the Entschidungsoblem was installed in Manchester University where he worked in their Maths department in 1948. The computer ran its first program June 1948.
The father of AI-Artifical intelligence to prove that Morcom's work wasn't in vain.
"If a computer can convince you it's intelligent, who can tell you it's not?"
The National Telegraph became interested in AI and the difference between the two. Lives, careers like humans almost real humanity like us.
Arnold Murray a nineteen year old, started this misfortune again which dogged Alan and along with other Hingis, eventually led to his arrest and choice between Chemical Castration or inprisonment because Homosexuality was illegal in public or private.
Turing believed that they brought each others' reputations down through the gutters and Alan thought he'd stole which was true until he was burgled, A watch belonging to his Father went missing. So he confronted Alan who told he wasn't involved and told him of Harry a friend who wouldn't take ,only unless is was dressed up like a loan, and got chatting to him about Alan's achievements and the burglary happened. Turing went to the the police believing the system would help him, a very Nëive move which complicated his problem.
Turing later wrote to another friend, Norman Routledge in Febuary 1952 telling him that he was in trouble like he always thought he might do because of his Homosexuality 10:1 against him emerging a different man from the whole thing, a public indecency, to have "Organo-therapic treatment" to remove testosterone from his body with Stylboestrol Tablets, a synthetic version of the Female sex hormone Estrogen. Lastly he was implanted with it in his thigh. Part of the reason Turing agreed was because he was informed it was "Reversible" and seemed slightly less harder than Prison.
In Spring 1953, six months visiting Dr. Greenbaum and he told him Mathmatical Biology, Morphogenisis why cells become wings, or Stripes on a tiger.
Botany and biology had always intrested him as a child and Greenbaum became Turing's friend and so much more almost like a family member. Kejll was a man in Norway whom Turing kissed drunkenly under a flag post and later tried to visit but, being chased over North England and deterred from visiting Turing he went home.
At the time Homosexal tendencies seemed weak, still in the shadow of war and it was the public's mind that assumed Turing fit that part due to his Top Secret work at Bletchly Park that this was a reason he'd go rogue.
It was medically proven that the Chemicals he'd been taking to Castrate him had altered his thinking, his ability to concentrate and muddle his brain because of the lack of Testosterone, Scientifical research not knowing that we need both Testosterone and Estrogen to function properly.
He wrote to Robin Gandy another friend of his about the changes and in particular his dismay at not being able to concentrate at all with what he was supposed to be doing and instead enverything else, presently.
April 1953 is when Turing's Estrogen treatment finished and he expected it to reverse quickly and in theory it should work but, not like Turing had expected. An intangible court ordered fate.
He couldn't take it anymore his reasoning to ride through failiaure and in a bid to cheer him Greenbaum's family invited Turing to Blackpool on holiday with them.
At the fair he enjoyed on the pier until he went to have his fortune read, emerging ashen-faced, horrified at whatever had happened.
June 1954
Allan tells Greenbaum about perhaps what the fortune teller said by explaining how different people see the world. Like bees seeing Ultra-Violet light and wouldn't divulge anymore. A sense of despair must have envaded him after all ? Take away his private dreams, and kill what mattered.
It's suggested that he used a Poisoned apple and electricity to kill himself although it's not proven.
June 8th, Wednesday 1954
Alan Mathias Turing was found dead by his housekeeper reported as Cynide poisoning and classed as Suicide, supposedly, with an apple on the bedside table but we are never told in history at all if it was ever true or not.
In September 2009, The British Government apologised for the way Alan Turing was Treated, saying "We're sorry. You deserved so much better." He was Pardoned December 24th 2014, By the queen, David Cameron and greats like Steven Hawking.
Comments
Post a Comment