£10
Overhead this morning on BBC breakfast (I know I shouldn’t listen to the statist propaganda, but I do need something to tell me the time as I have my bacon and egg toastie) was a small item about who could be the new face on the £10 note. Currently we have Charles Darwin but there is a petition to have Alan Turing as the face on the new series of £10 notes.
Is he a suitable replacement on the £10? Or is it just a continuation of the campaign to have past wrongs corrected, such as trying to have his criminal conviction for homosexuality overturned and asking the government to apologise for causing Alan to commit suicide because of the pressure over his sexuality. Something that is in the past and is like an attempt to re-write history.
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Alternatively, as it’s a Friday and you all want to get home for the weekend, how about a suitable face for a roll of toilet paper? Just to make it more interesting, no politician is allowed.
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June 15, 2012 at 13:08 -
Rather than correcting past wrongs, could you not see Turing on the £10 as justifiable on the grounds of his contributions to our WWII effort and also to computing generally? Are you being blinkered? Or just provocative?
Toilet paper: Osborne (George) – I might not get to wipe the smug smile off his face, but I’d achieve an agreeable alternative…
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June 15, 2012 at 13:10 -
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June 16, 2012 at 12:57 -
For his contributions to computing? Well, might as well have Sirallen on it too…
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June 17, 2012 at 08:11 -
“Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS ( /ˈtjʊərɪŋ/ tewr-ing; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954), was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of “algorithm” and “computation” with the Turing machine, which played a significant role in the creation of the modern computer.[1][2] Turing is widely considered to be the father of computer science and artificial intelligence.” – Wikipedia.
Still, never let ignorance get in the way of a failed quip.
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6
June 15, 2012 at 13:10 -
Bono and Madonna on alternating sheets.
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7
June 15, 2012 at 13:17 -
Robin Hood
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June 15, 2012 at 13:30 -
Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles
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June 15, 2012 at 13:41 -
BBC ‘comedians’. So that’ll be one for each sheet on the roll. Brigstocke, Hardy, Steele, Hamilton….
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June 15, 2012 at 14:00 -
Not just his contribution in WWII, but also one of the most influential mathematicians of the 20th century. Why not?
And what’s wrong with correcting past wrongs, in principle at least?
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June 16, 2012 at 13:00 -
Nothing wrong with correcting past wrongs, but we did that when we decriminalised homosexuality. To try to get his conviction overturned is a nonsense. It WAS the law then, and he WAS guilty.
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June 16, 2012 at 16:49 -
You could reasonably object to his ‘sentence’, as it was cruel & unusual punishment then as now. Chemical castration or chokey was not an inviting choice.
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June 15, 2012 at 14:37 -
Toilet paper? This is just too easy; Russell Brand.
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June 15, 2012 at 15:01 -
Eric Blair, the bastards need constant reminders.
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June 15, 2012 at 16:35 -
I assume you meant Eric Blair for the tenner – how about his namesake Tony for the bog-roll ?
On the basis that the bank-note subject must not be a living person, how about Enoch Powell – just as a constant reminder of how accurate he was ?
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June 15, 2012 at 17:39 -
Piers Morgan
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June 15, 2012 at 18:27 -
Duncan Bannatyne
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June 15, 2012 at 18:29 -
Why not turn loo rolls into legal tender for ordinary people to inject money into the economy from the bottom up instead of top-down via the banks (QE and today’s £100 billion wheeze)?
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June 15, 2012 at 19:26 -
We all know that the next person on the bank-note will be a politically correct choice. Black,gay,female,disabled? Diversity bingo anyone?
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June 15, 2012 at 22:33 -
John Maynard Keynes
Due to his legacy, the £10 note will soon enough be as worthless as his macroeconomic general theory…
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June 15, 2012 at 23:12 -
Recognise the legacy of Keynes with a nod to the previous topic on SF & social comment. Make it the face of Robert Heinlein with his quote summarising inflation-
“$100 invested at 7% interest for 100 years will become $100000, at which time it will be worth absolutely nothing.” — (Lazarus Long, “Time Enough for Love”) -
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June 16, 2012 at 02:13 -
Henry the eigth as he knew how to deal with women , the clergy and foreigners. And show biz is eternally grateful that he existed.
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June 16, 2012 at 02:23 -
Adrian Chiles
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June 16, 2012 at 09:44 -
Well let me put the pro case then.
Alan Turing’s achievement rests on three pillars, first as an mathematician, secondly as a codebreaker, and finally as an engineer.
In his 20′s he published a paper which glories in the name: ON COMPUTABLE NUMBERS, WITH AN APPLICATION TO THEENTSCHEIDUNGSPROBLEM. Let me be absolutely clear on this. Without this intellectual breakthrough, Computers. Would. Not. Exist.
It’s worthwhile pondering on what life might look like without them. No blogs like this for a start, no Facebook, Twitter, or any world wide web. I’ve got at least ten of them sitting round the house. Most of them are disguised as phones, satnavs, cd players etc. There’s a computer in the toaster and another one is in the living room teaching my 7 year old algebra!.
I recently saw the remake of Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy and there are several interior scenes in the offices of the Circus. No PCs, just bulky typewriters on desks. Phones that seem to have been manufactured out of cast iron. Victorian lifts. That’s our culture sans Turing.
During the 80′s the papers were released that made it clear the impact of his work at Bletchley Park in breaking the enigma codes. It’s an exaggeration to say that he saved Britain during the war, but it’s no exaggeration to say that his contribution saved thousands, arguably ten of thousands of lives. His work was so secret that there’s a suspicion that the raid on Coventry was allowed to go ahead to protect it. It’s plausible, and plausibly the correct decision too. The fact that the argument can be seriously entertained, the life of a small city vs the secret work of Bletchley Park gives a view as to the significance of his efforts.
After the war he moved to Manchester and built one of the first computers in the world. It’s the technical ancestor of virtually every computer that’s ever been made. It’s been my life’s work. The field he pioneered has provided work and sustenance to me and mine for a long professional career.
Set against these facts, we have a conviction for homosexuality.
I believe the way the Catholic Church treated Galileo as a dreadful shame, but at least they only put him under house arrest, they didn’t drive him to suicide. Putting Turing on £10 pound notes might provide some small comfort to similar survivors of the era. As for myself, I hold the people involved in the conviction – the policemen looking for an easy collar, the courts, and the wider society that condoned it – in absolute contempt.
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June 16, 2012 at 12:11 -
Amen to that – and no, I’m hetro (old fashioned cove) but Turing deserves our gratitude. As just one example, I believe that at El Alamein Rommel wondered what the Hell was happening. He didn’t know that Montgomery already had the German battle plan from Bletchley Park. Just one example among hundreds where Turing’s work helped save many lives. I’d rather see him on the note than some dumb politician or “celebrity”.
Also, I love my PC – thanks Alan.
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June 16, 2012 at 13:05 -
“Let me be absolutely clear on this. Without this intellectual breakthrough, Computers. Would. Not. Exist.”
Because no-one else would have had such an intellectual breakthrough? There’s only one such in the Universe and God allocated it to Turing?
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June 16, 2012 at 13:46 -
There was in fact 1 other, discovered by Alonzo Church at round about the same time, and a few formally equivalent systems have been noticed since 1936.
What makes Turing stuff stand out was that unlike the other systems, his could actually be built with the technology of the day, wires, electromagnetic relays, and in the 50′s glass tubes filled with mercury. Church’s system could not.
There had been electromechanical calculators prior to Turing, and even systems that displayed a primitive form of memory (jacquard looms). Amongst other things Turing showed the precise limits of such a system, and in doing so revealed what such a system could do.
At the time he was one of only 2 or 3 people on the planet asking the question, who knows how long we would have had to have waited for someone else to spot it.
When he killed himself he had been working on biological processes. What was lost when he bit the poisoned apple ? We’ll never know.
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June 16, 2012 at 13:47 -
Not to belittle Alan Turing’s contribution, but he was a software man. The electronic computer hardware was invented by Tommy Flowers. Before that you had electric computers that used relays and before that you had mechanical computers and before that you had human computers.
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June 16, 2012 at 18:07 -
Attempts were made to disrupt the November 14 raid on Coventry by jamming the X-Gerat signal but the technique used was slightly flawed. However, investigation of equipment found on a Heinkel 111 shortly before the Coventry raid enabled jamming to be recalibrated and a raid on Birmingham on 19 November was successfully disrupted. The credit for this and much other radar and other scientific work lies with R V Jones, another candidate for a banknote.
Coventry, being a densely-packed and incendiary target would probably have been heavily and accurately bombed anyway as it could be fairly easily located by dead reckoning navigationa methods alone, especially if the experten of KG100 acted as pathfinders to mark targets for the main force.
The biggest scandal about the blitz was the lack of credible night-fighters and anti-aircraft guns. The Dowding system of integrated radar, radio signals intercept, observers and command only worked for daylight raids. The Chain Home radars could not be used to plot raids inland. To a great extent, until the Luftwaffe bombers went East in May 1941, civilians were unprotected. -
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June 16, 2012 at 21:58 -
@Andy Dwelly: Excellent! Turing was a brilliant man – to be spoken of in the same company as other pioneers like Alexander Fleming, or Robert Stephenson.
He deserves his place in history and our gratitude.
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June 16, 2012 at 10:11 -
I’m happy with Turing on a £10, he deserves it, irrespective of any righting wrongs or establishment embarrassment issues.
I’m having difficulty with the toilet paper though. There are plenty of candidates but most are people I don’t want in such an intimate proximity round my arse and wouldn’t trust to be so close in any format.-
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June 17, 2012 at 09:58
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June 16, 2012 at 11:07 -
Alan Turing did quite amazing work which helped shorten the war.
On that basis he deserves recognition and it would be fine to have him on a banknote. If that also pleases the homosexual lobby that’s pretty irrelevant.
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June 16, 2012 at 11:44 -
Toilet paper nominations:
Fred the Shred – Symbol of greed AND incompetence
Bob Crow = Symbol of greed AND mindless lass warfare
Jedward – Symbol of talentless celebrity culture
Che Guevara – Symbol of murderous leftwing hypocrisyBono seconded by the way
I think there a business in this!! – customised toilet paper…
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June 16, 2012 at 12:04 -
I was a teenager at the time of Alan Turing’s death, and took a great interest in the contemporary reports. I do not believe he committed suicide, and neither did anyone who knew him, especially his mother. He was, I’m told, a notoriously clumsy and careless experimenter, and it was believed by his friends that he’d inadvertently chewed on an apple whilst experimenting with cyanide. The nature of the experiment remains, I believe, unknown, but he was a man with a wide variety of scientific interests.
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June 16, 2012 at 13:37 -
“Without this intellectual breakthrough, Computers. Would. Not. Exist.”
I suspect that you haven’t researched what is the Entscheidungsproblem and have relied on too many pop science articles asserting that Turing invented computers.
Actually, Alonzo Church solved the Entscheidungsproblem a year before Turing’s work.
What Turing invented, is the idea of a “Turing machine”. Imagine a strip of tape with symnbols on it; a Turing machine manipulates those symbols. It’s an imaginary concept, a thought-experiment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine
Turing did brilliant and very important work indeed. But he didn’t invent the electronic computer. He did invent Banburismus, which is an especial favourite of mine because of it’s relationship to Bayesian inference.
If you want the origin of computers, you have to go way way back. At least to Babbage, and further back from there.
If you want the origin of electronic computers, you have to thank a whole bunch of people. For a candidate for the £10 note, I’d propose Tommy Flowers. He came up with the idea of an all-electronic machine (eventually called Colossus), a major advance on the electromechanical devices used up till then.
Tommy Flowers had the idea, designed it, paid for much of it and led the team that built the first electronic computer. He got an award of £1000 and an MBE, very few people have heard of him, and he’s my candidate for the £10 note.
I prefer my toilet paper blank; I can’t think of anyone who deserves the honour of wiping my bum.
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June 16, 2012 at 14:01 -
See my response to JuliaM. I’m well aware of the nature of computable numbers.
Also, I didn’t claim that Turing invented computers, I believe the situation is somewhat subtler than that. I said that without Turing we would not have had computers when we did or in the form we now see them. That is, he was the essential link in the chain.
The thing about wars in particular is that they tend to be packed with unsung heros, so I take your point about Tommy Flowers. He only died in 98 I see.
I wonder what he would have thought ?
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June 16, 2012 at 14:17 -
As ‘we’ seem to be concentrating on a problem about Alan Turing (NOT “The Turing Problem”) – May I point out that next Saturday – 23 June 2012 – is the 100th anniversary of his birth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing_Year[For my money – the best/most readable/informative book about Bletchley Park is-
” Code Breakers” by FH Hinsley & A Stripp -(OUP, 1993)
ISBN 0-19-285303-X][There are 10 sorts of mathematician; those who understand ‘Binary’ – and those who don’t.]
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June 16, 2012 at 17:13 -
Why not have Turing AND Flowers on the £10 note, we have two fellers on the £50 after all. This would also stop the gay mafia crowing about having a queer on the currency, which is IMO a totally wrong and nonsensical reason for doing it. We dont actually put people on notes just for being hetero now do we?
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June 16, 2012 at 19:38 -
Why do they want to waste money issuing new designs on the notes anyway? If we are to cut unnecessary spending wouldn’t it be better to postpone any change until our deficit is fixed?
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June 17, 2012 at 06:14 -
@davidb – Why re-design currency?
The range of security measures can be changed, to make things more difficult (un-profitable) for forgers.
The ‘printing plates’ have a finite usable life – so need regular replacement anyway. -
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June 17, 2012 at 22:44 -
Probably what was at least on equal par with the treatment of Turing, was the British government’s decision to keep Turing’s work secret after WWII. If we had had some forethought Apple would probably be a Cox’s now!
Get him on the tenner!
PS @JuliaM There is absolutely no comparison to Sugar here my dear.
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