WWII Codebreaker Alan Turing Finally Gets The Stamp Of Approval
Queer history buffs will now have a chance to lick one of their icons all over: Alan Turing, the gay mathematician who helped break the Nazi’s Enigma code in WWII, is being honored with a stamp in his native United Kingdom.
It’s a bittersweet honor for Turing, who was sentenced to chemical castration because of “gross indecency” in 1952 and committed suicide in 1954. Online petitions call for his conviction to be posthumously pardoned.
To mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Turing, who is also considered the father of the modern computer, the Turing Centenary Advisory Committee is coordinating The Alan Turing Year, a year-long program of events around the world honoring his life and achievements.
Congrats on the stamp, Alan. If only people still wrote letters.
you can sit next to him and have your photo taken, there is a statue of him in Sackville Park in the village in Manchester! may I also point out that it’s alleged not a single computer company would give a single penny towards that statue!
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Where, may I ask, is the big budget Hollywood film about Turing, directed by a top notch queen director, and starring this seasons hottest leading man?
Or one about Baron von Steuben?
If the public knew of our massive contributions to history, we’d have our civil rights delivered yesterday wrapped in gold leaf with rose petals fluttering.
I swear. This community so needs a lesson in strategy.
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Alan Turing did a lot more than code breaking. He also invented the thing that we now call a “computer”. Here’s a biography: http://www.turing.org.uk/turin.....index.html
That bio includes a naked picture of Alan, BTW. It is old and fuzzy enough to be SFW, almost.
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Indeed, the stories of Turing and von Steuben are fantastic and would make a frigging fortune.
But the media have been using us as a wedge issue for sixty years, and they’ll needs us even more as the economy goes south. So they’re not about to show anyone our great heroes.
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No. 6 · Steve wrote, “Alan Turing did a lot more than code breaking. He also invented the thing that we now call a “computer”.”
It would be more accurate to say that Turning invented the field of Computer Science, not a computer as an actual machine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3keLeMwfHY has a physical model of a Turning machine – someone designed and built one, using technology that was simply not available when Turing was alive.
A Turing machine was never meant to be a practical device, but rather a model of computation useful in proofs.
Perhaps of more interest to some readers of this site is that Turing was a world-class runner as well, so he was in pretty good physical condition.
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A True Genius, the kind that only comes along once in a generation.
Analysts and historians now agree that the code breakers at Bletchley Park probably shortened the war by as much as two years, a war that cost 10 million lives per year and millions more injured, homeless, and desperate.
Alan Turing should have been hailed a hero and was instead persecuted for being a homosexual.
And before anyone jumps in to remind me that many other good men and women also fought in that war, I am forever grateful of their sacrifice and valor, without which none of us in the LGBT community would be free to express our opinions or our orientation.
Of course statistically at least 10% of them would have been LGBT themselves.
Progress maybe slow, but it happens nonetheless.
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if you want to know about the man check this out.
http://www.alanturing.net/index.htm
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@WillBFair: There was a Broadway play titled “Breaking The Code” done on Broadway in 1987 staring Derek Jacobi who palyed Alan Turing, and ran for 169 performances. Then in 1996 the BBC did a TV movie from the play also staring Jocobi in the same role he played on Broadway. It was also shown on American TV later that same year. It is available of VHS from Amazon and most likely other sellers of used VHS’s. It is a very good movie.
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Rumor has it that Warner Bros. picked up a script for a Turing biopic in October. If everything holds, Leonardo DiCaprio will portray Turing.
http://www.avclub.com/articles.....ner,63285/
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Awesome man he was! RIP Alan!