WEBVTT - Alan Turing: Codebreaker 0:00:00.560 --> 0:00:03.800 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from house 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:13.680 stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:16.560 I'm fair Dowdy and I'm Deblina chuk Reboarding, and today 0:00:16.600 --> 0:00:19.439 we're going to be talking about Alan Turing. And he's 0:00:19.480 --> 0:00:24.600 considered the father of computer science, the father of artificial intelligence, 0:00:25.160 --> 0:00:28.440 and also one of the most important wartime code breakers 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:32.279 in World War Two. So quite a resume just right 0:00:32.360 --> 0:00:34.880 off the bat there, and for listeners with a more 0:00:35.120 --> 0:00:38.199 literary bent, he's also been called the Shelley of Science, 0:00:38.240 --> 0:00:40.680 which is a name I kind of took a shine 0:00:40.680 --> 0:00:42.760 to you. Yeah, and others have too. He's been a 0:00:42.760 --> 0:00:47.160 really popular podcast suggestion, though his resumes focus on math 0:00:47.200 --> 0:00:49.720 and technology has always kind of scared us off a 0:00:49.720 --> 0:00:53.120 little bit. I think, I mean things like number theory, probability, 0:00:53.600 --> 0:00:57.920 computer programs. It's not our usual subject matter stuff. I'm 0:00:58.080 --> 0:01:01.480 I'm honestly a little scared to get into too deeply. 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:05.520 But fortunately some of his work really transcends the arcane. 0:01:05.560 --> 0:01:08.720 It's it's understandable if you put some effort into it. 0:01:09.040 --> 0:01:12.360 And there's a wealth of biographical materials to which I 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:14.600 feel like the last few podcasts I've done that has 0:01:14.680 --> 0:01:16.600 not been the case, so it was a little it 0:01:16.680 --> 0:01:19.360 was a little refreshing really to research Alan Turning and 0:01:19.440 --> 0:01:21.920 know that there's so much out there about this man. 0:01:21.959 --> 0:01:25.560 There are m I T lectures, there's a digital archive 0:01:25.640 --> 0:01:28.399 at Alan Turing dot net. Their article has in just 0:01:28.520 --> 0:01:31.960 about every science journal you can name, and there's a 0:01:32.000 --> 0:01:35.280 How Stuff Works podcast to Yeah, Jonathan and Chris talked 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:38.520 about Turing's life less fall on tech stuff and so 0:01:38.600 --> 0:01:40.080 that's a great place to turn if you want to 0:01:40.319 --> 0:01:44.840 a little more of an in depth discussion on programming. Yeah, specifically, 0:01:44.920 --> 0:01:48.760 I was glad though that even they admitted that the 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:52.000 map was kind of tricky to discuss. It's just so 0:01:52.360 --> 0:01:55.000 high level. But they do really do a good job 0:01:55.040 --> 0:01:58.400 covering the programming and in that side of Turning story. 0:01:58.480 --> 0:02:01.680 But it's also June, which is Pride Month, and that's 0:02:01.720 --> 0:02:05.720 why we've picked Turing for today's topic. He's a great, 0:02:05.960 --> 0:02:10.160 if tragic example of a remarkable man, really a genius 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:14.480 whose life was so clearly defined by his homosexuality and 0:02:14.760 --> 0:02:17.760 reminded me a lot of Oscar Wilde, who Katie and 0:02:17.760 --> 0:02:20.600 I covered last year for Pride Month. He was another 0:02:20.639 --> 0:02:24.920 man who was really destroyed by prejudice at the absolute 0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:28.200 height of his achievement. So it's a great story to 0:02:28.280 --> 0:02:32.240 learn about, and it's it's good to know about Turing's achievements, 0:02:32.280 --> 0:02:35.280 but it is also a really, really sad story. Yeah 0:02:35.360 --> 0:02:37.040 it is. But before we get to that, we're going 0:02:37.080 --> 0:02:39.400 to start sort of with the beginnings of his life. 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:44.120 Alan Mathieson Turing was born June nine, twelve in London 0:02:44.480 --> 0:02:47.240 to a member of the Indian civil service. His father 0:02:47.520 --> 0:02:50.840 actually served in the Madrass presidency and his mother's father 0:02:50.919 --> 0:02:53.840 was the chief engineer of the Madrass railways. But Turning 0:02:53.880 --> 0:02:56.440 didn't grow up in India. Instead, his parents had the 0:02:56.480 --> 0:02:58.800 kids fostered in British homes, which, as you can imagine, 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:01.600 was pretty lonely, and his parents didn't even come back 0:03:01.639 --> 0:03:05.240 to England until nine, not until his dad retired. So 0:03:05.600 --> 0:03:09.440 he spent prep school trying to do as much science 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:11.440 and math as he could get away with, which at 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:14.679 the time it wasn't really the agenda. I guess he 0:03:14.720 --> 0:03:18.600 would be an outstanding student these days, but his skepticism 0:03:18.680 --> 0:03:22.280 and his curiosity also sometimes got him in trouble with 0:03:22.280 --> 0:03:26.000 with the authority figures at school. But in nineteen twenty eight, 0:03:26.040 --> 0:03:30.720 he had his first experience of true intellectual stimulation. He 0:03:30.800 --> 0:03:34.040 made friends with a boy who was one year ahead 0:03:34.040 --> 0:03:38.000 of him, Christopher Morecambe and Jonathan and Chris. The way 0:03:38.040 --> 0:03:40.160 they explained this, I really liked it the way they 0:03:40.200 --> 0:03:45.040 explained the friendship. Essentially, the two kids could bounce ideas 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:47.360 off of each other and combine what they knew and 0:03:47.440 --> 0:03:50.280 really come away from it with a deeper understanding. So 0:03:50.480 --> 0:03:54.120 sort of a friendship of two minds that was really 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:58.400 influential in the young Turing's life. Yeah, So when Marcum 0:03:58.560 --> 0:04:02.040 died suddenly in nineteen third, the teenage Churing was left 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:05.640 wondering what happened to Markham's consciousness. He was pretty devastated 0:04:05.720 --> 0:04:08.200 and and wanted to explore that idea further. So for 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:11.040 three years he wrote letters to Markham's mother trying to 0:04:11.080 --> 0:04:14.520 figure out the relationship between mind and matter. And that's 0:04:14.520 --> 0:04:17.960 a quest that would later define his work and artificial intelligence, 0:04:18.000 --> 0:04:19.320 which you're going to talk about a little more in 0:04:19.320 --> 0:04:21.360 a few minutes. Yea, I will definitely be talking about that. 0:04:21.400 --> 0:04:24.880 But in October nine, so while he's really in the 0:04:24.920 --> 0:04:29.559 middle of his grief in and this new look into 0:04:29.760 --> 0:04:32.360 the relationship between mind and matter. He goes off to 0:04:32.440 --> 0:04:36.480 college King's College, Cambridge, and of course he studies math, 0:04:36.920 --> 0:04:40.320 and it was really a different inspiring environment for him 0:04:40.360 --> 0:04:43.360 to one where he could think creatively. He could study 0:04:43.440 --> 0:04:48.479 things like philosophy and economics and surround himself by intelligent people, 0:04:48.480 --> 0:04:53.000 and also recognized his own sexuality, and he socialized with 0:04:53.279 --> 0:04:56.880 some of the anti war intellectual circle. But his politics 0:04:56.960 --> 0:05:00.720 weren't really sharply defined during this period. His in recreation 0:05:00.800 --> 0:05:04.000 was athletic. He liked running and rowing and failing, and 0:05:04.040 --> 0:05:07.880 of course doing math. Yeah, by nineteen thirty four he 0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:10.880 had received a distinguished degree, and by nineteen thirty five, 0:05:10.920 --> 0:05:14.200 at age twenty two, he got a fellowship to King's College. 0:05:14.720 --> 0:05:17.440 So well on this intellectual path of his. But it 0:05:17.520 --> 0:05:21.120 was in nineteen thirty five that Turing started tackling and 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:25.720 intriguing mathematical question, and that's the question of decidability. And 0:05:25.839 --> 0:05:29.400 during that process he envisions a machine that could complete 0:05:29.480 --> 0:05:33.920 computational operations just like the human brain. The Turing machine 0:05:34.080 --> 0:05:37.159 at that point was purely theoretical, but it could perform 0:05:37.200 --> 0:05:40.000 any kind of operation. It was programmed to do, play chess, 0:05:40.040 --> 0:05:44.080 to calculate numbers, anything, like that, and that idea develops 0:05:44.120 --> 0:05:47.800 into the idea of a universal Turing machine which could 0:05:47.800 --> 0:05:51.719 handle any task, and individual touring machine could. So, for example, 0:05:51.760 --> 0:05:54.359 if the Turing machine is the early computer program, the 0:05:54.440 --> 0:05:58.160 universal machine would be the early computer, the one machine 0:05:58.200 --> 0:06:00.680 that can do any task it's programmed to do. Yeah, 0:06:00.720 --> 0:06:04.560 and a guy named b Jack Copeland described the significance 0:06:04.720 --> 0:06:07.120 of this creation in an M I. T lecture. And 0:06:07.160 --> 0:06:10.359 it really helped me understand how important it was because 0:06:10.680 --> 0:06:13.480 it might seem a little old hat if you if 0:06:13.520 --> 0:06:16.360 you just look at it like a computer or computer program, 0:06:16.440 --> 0:06:20.120 he said. Nowadays, when nearly everyone owns the physical realization 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:23.680 of a universal turning machine, Turing's idea of a one 0:06:23.720 --> 0:06:27.320 stop shop computing machine is apt to seem as obvious 0:06:27.360 --> 0:06:30.680 as the wheel. But in nineteen thirty six, engineers thought 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:35.000 in terms of building specific machines for particular purposes. So 0:06:35.360 --> 0:06:38.400 this was really a revolutionary idea at the time, and 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:42.240 of course some people realized that, but not everyone knew 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:46.039 the full implications of of what this idea would eventually 0:06:46.200 --> 0:06:48.039 come to. Yeah, And it would be more than a 0:06:48.080 --> 0:06:51.359 decade before the physical realization of a turning machine was 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:55.040 actually built, until then Touring continued continued his studies at 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:57.760 Princeton and then returned to England and Cambridge before the 0:06:57.760 --> 0:07:00.280 outbreak of World War two, and then on the first 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:02.560 full day of the war he joined the Government Code 0:07:02.560 --> 0:07:05.279 and Cipher School, whose headquarters were at the now famous 0:07:05.279 --> 0:07:09.280 Fleshley Park in London. Yeah, and the GCCS was busy 0:07:09.560 --> 0:07:12.520 bringing together all of the country's top minds at this point, 0:07:12.560 --> 0:07:17.320 so mathematicians like Touring, that also chess players and egyptologists, 0:07:17.360 --> 0:07:20.520 all sorts of smart people with different kinds of skills, 0:07:20.560 --> 0:07:24.840 anyone who they hoped might lend insight into breaking German codes, 0:07:24.920 --> 0:07:27.440 which was what they were all about in the chief 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:29.880 Code at the time. The one that was really giving 0:07:29.920 --> 0:07:34.880 them the most trouble was the Enigma, and Polish Cryptanalysis 0:07:34.920 --> 0:07:37.280 had been working on the Enigma for a really long 0:07:37.320 --> 0:07:40.120 time since the nineteen thirty two and they had created 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:43.880 a code breaking machine called the Bomba a few years 0:07:43.920 --> 0:07:47.280 after that, but by nineteen thirty nine, Touring and others 0:07:47.280 --> 0:07:50.000 were helping to create a new machine, one that could 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:52.760 adapt to the Enigma, because it got to where the 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:56.640 Germans were changing the codes every twenty four hours pretty much, 0:07:56.920 --> 0:07:59.720 so he helped develop a new machine called the Bomb, 0:07:59.720 --> 0:08:04.600 which could decipher LOOFWAFA Enigma communications. There's a really neat 0:08:04.640 --> 0:08:08.720 British Heritage article by Gene pash Key about Bletchley Park, 0:08:08.880 --> 0:08:11.000 which I recommend if you just sort of want to 0:08:11.000 --> 0:08:12.800 get a picture of it. We were actually talking about 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:15.640 this might be a good episode in itself, but I 0:08:15.640 --> 0:08:19.120 hope we don't give too much away. It nicely describes 0:08:19.640 --> 0:08:23.400 rooms full of these machines and the operators who maintain them. 0:08:23.440 --> 0:08:27.320 And in case you think that they're little, tiny devices 0:08:27.400 --> 0:08:30.440 like we're used to today, little electronic devices, they're not 0:08:30.560 --> 0:08:35.000 in any sense like that. They are large mechanical machines 0:08:35.120 --> 0:08:37.120 that required a lot of upbeat. They had to be 0:08:37.200 --> 0:08:42.000 kept clean, um they were. They took up the room essentially, 0:08:42.760 --> 0:08:45.640 So these really big machines. They helped crack the Air 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:49.280 Force Enigma, but the German naval Enigma was kind of 0:08:49.320 --> 0:08:52.520 a tougher nut to crack and also critical for winning 0:08:52.559 --> 0:08:55.400 the Battle of the Atlantic. So Turing had worked out 0:08:55.440 --> 0:08:57.600 part of the code in nineteen thirty nine, but the 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:00.400 big break in the situation came courtesy of a Royal 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:04.160 Navy when they captured an Enigma machine and code book 0:09:04.160 --> 0:09:07.280 from a U boat. So by June one U boat 0:09:07.320 --> 0:09:10.120 traffic was decipherable. Yeah, they had cracked the code, and 0:09:10.640 --> 0:09:14.400 by early nineteen forty two, Bletchley Park was decoding thirty 0:09:14.480 --> 0:09:18.040 nine thousand German transmissions a month, and of course some 0:09:18.200 --> 0:09:21.800 of those were complaints about the underwear splitting down the 0:09:21.840 --> 0:09:24.560 middle and that type of thing, but also some really 0:09:24.640 --> 0:09:28.840 serious communications in there. It rose to an eventual eighty 0:09:28.960 --> 0:09:34.000 four thousand transmissions a month, so pretty astonishing figure. And 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:37.600 with the nineteen forty three breaking of Germany's high level 0:09:37.880 --> 0:09:42.199 binary teleprinter code, which was what Hitler himself used, and 0:09:42.520 --> 0:09:46.120 high members of his government um Churchill, was able to 0:09:46.160 --> 0:09:49.960 read Hitler's mail before Hitler could read it. According to 0:09:50.160 --> 0:09:53.880 Posh's article, something I thought was interesting and something I 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:56.680 never knew about Bletchley Park. Yeah, me neither. But it 0:09:56.679 --> 0:09:59.120 turns out the combined efforts of Bletchley Park shortened the 0:09:59.400 --> 0:10:02.720 war by two years, and for his part, Turing received 0:10:02.800 --> 0:10:05.320 the Order of the British Empire, which was one of 0:10:05.320 --> 0:10:07.760 the most prestigious awards you could get. Yeah. And so 0:10:07.840 --> 0:10:10.320 after the war he's looking for a new job and 0:10:10.400 --> 0:10:14.840 he was recruited to the National Physics Laboratory, and the task, 0:10:15.200 --> 0:10:18.880 conveniently enough was to design and build an electronic computer, 0:10:19.040 --> 0:10:22.400 so essentially a real Turing machine. Seems like just the 0:10:22.440 --> 0:10:25.120 guy to bring in to do this, and he called 0:10:25.160 --> 0:10:28.200 his new design the Automatic Computing Engine, which has the 0:10:28.640 --> 0:10:32.559 lovely acronym ACE. Would have made a good computer, uh, 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:36.439 and it was a really ambitious advanced design it. If 0:10:36.480 --> 0:10:38.520 it had been built, it would have had the memory 0:10:38.559 --> 0:10:42.640 capacity of an early Mac. So that's pretty astounding if 0:10:42.640 --> 0:10:45.640 you consider this immediately after a World War Two. Yeah, 0:10:45.640 --> 0:10:48.840 but things moved more slowly than they had at Bletchley Park. 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:51.360 There was lots of red tape to deal with, and 0:10:51.400 --> 0:10:54.840 Turing's colleagues thought that the original ACE design was too 0:10:54.920 --> 0:10:57.559 much and opted for a smaller machine, which was called 0:10:57.840 --> 0:11:01.079 the Pilot Model ACE. So part of the problem here 0:11:01.120 --> 0:11:06.240 was that Turing's wartime achievements were unrecognized due to their secrecy. Yeah, 0:11:06.360 --> 0:11:09.320 he couldn't go out and say, well, guys at Bletchley Park, 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:12.160 I did this. I mean, he couldn't talk about any 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:14.959 of that stuff. Yeah, he couldn't brag on himself. So 0:11:15.080 --> 0:11:18.280 to relieve the frustration and the stress of the situation, 0:11:18.320 --> 0:11:21.720 he started long distance running, and it took an injury 0:11:21.800 --> 0:11:25.160 actually to prevent him from qualifying for the nine Olympic 0:11:25.200 --> 0:11:27.199 marathon team. So he was pretty good at it. He 0:11:27.320 --> 0:11:29.360 was really good at it. It's it's one of those 0:11:29.920 --> 0:11:31.520 I don't know, it's like a cherry on top for 0:11:31.600 --> 0:11:34.000 somebody with so many talents that they would also be 0:11:34.040 --> 0:11:35.760 an amazing athlete. Well, I was going to say, it's 0:11:35.760 --> 0:11:39.960 almost not fair, but you're kinder than I am, obviously. Yeah, well, 0:11:40.240 --> 0:11:42.600 whatever way you look at it. But by this point, 0:11:42.800 --> 0:11:46.560 delays meant that the National Physics Laboratory wasn't going to 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:50.800 be the first place that built the first working electronics 0:11:50.800 --> 0:11:55.480 stored program digital computer. That honor went to Manchester University 0:11:55.920 --> 0:12:00.800 and it happened in June. So Turing obviously frustrated by 0:12:00.920 --> 0:12:03.840 his his time at the National Physics Laboratory, and they 0:12:03.880 --> 0:12:06.360 got beat out. Yeah, they got beat out. He wasn't 0:12:06.360 --> 0:12:11.720 really listened to his achievements, and accomplishments weren't really appreciated 0:12:11.760 --> 0:12:15.320 to the the level they deserved to be. So he 0:12:15.360 --> 0:12:19.640 went to work in Manchester, oddly enough as the deputy 0:12:19.720 --> 0:12:23.240 director even though there was no director of the program. 0:12:23.320 --> 0:12:26.679 Kind of a strange little detail there. Yeah, but he 0:12:26.800 --> 0:12:29.720 designed the programming system of the Ferronti Mark one, the 0:12:29.760 --> 0:12:33.719 first commercially available digital electronic computer, so hopefully that was 0:12:33.760 --> 0:12:37.720 a little solace for a consolation program. Yeah. Um. And 0:12:37.800 --> 0:12:40.400 it was also during his time at Manchester that Turing 0:12:40.520 --> 0:12:44.400 started to hypothesize about what would later be known as 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:48.120 artificial intelligence, and and I thought it was it was interesting, 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:50.800 and this is something that's kind of, I guess, difficult 0:12:50.800 --> 0:12:53.880 for me to talk about with my limited knowledge of 0:12:53.920 --> 0:12:57.000 computer programming and science. I just work on a computer. 0:12:57.080 --> 0:13:02.400 I don't know what happens inside. But I impressed that Um, 0:13:02.440 --> 0:13:06.160 even though he had he had the skill to work 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:09.560 on developing this field, he put the machine to use 0:13:09.679 --> 0:13:11.960 right away, so I'm sure he was still considering about 0:13:12.040 --> 0:13:14.320 how it could be advanced. But he started looking for 0:13:14.400 --> 0:13:17.240 ways to use the Fronti Mark one, which I thought 0:13:17.320 --> 0:13:19.360 was was pretty neat. Yeah. It kind of went back 0:13:19.360 --> 0:13:22.400 to his old interest in the connection between mind and matter, 0:13:22.559 --> 0:13:26.480 and in nineteen fifty Touring wrote a paper called Computing, 0:13:26.520 --> 0:13:30.120 Machinery and Intelligence in the journal Mind. In it, he 0:13:30.240 --> 0:13:33.960 proposed something called an imitation test. Today that's called the 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:37.760 Turing test, and the test basically provided a way to 0:13:37.880 --> 0:13:42.280 judge the intelligence of a machine without bias. So an interrogator, 0:13:42.320 --> 0:13:45.400 for example, would sit in an isolated room from two subjects, 0:13:45.960 --> 0:13:49.600 one a person, one a machine, and the interrogator would 0:13:49.600 --> 0:13:52.559 ask them both questions, and if the interrogator couldn't tell 0:13:52.600 --> 0:13:55.800 who was who, then that meant the machine was thinking. Yeah, 0:13:55.880 --> 0:14:01.000 it had intelligence in some definable way. And Turing even 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:03.760 predicted he had a lot of confidence in computers. He 0:14:03.880 --> 0:14:07.280 predicted that by the year two thousand, a computer would 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:11.240 be so good at this game this, this Turing test, 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:15.280 an interrogator would not have more than a seventy percent 0:14:15.440 --> 0:14:18.680 chance of correctly identifying who is who after five minutes. 0:14:18.840 --> 0:14:23.360 And that is a very ambitious goal because according to 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:28.080 Encyclopedia Britannica, no computer today has even come close to 0:14:28.120 --> 0:14:31.560 that standard. But Turing really he did have a lot 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:36.160 of hopes for computers. Yeah. He also hypothesized that one day, quote, 0:14:36.240 --> 0:14:38.840 ladies would take their computers for walks in the park 0:14:38.960 --> 0:14:41.560 and tell each other, my little computer said such a 0:14:41.560 --> 0:14:43.760 funny thing in the morning. I think we're a little 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:47.400 closer to that one than the seventy percent goal. Maybe 0:14:47.560 --> 0:14:50.800 I don't know. I still like my doggie though. Yeah. 0:14:50.920 --> 0:14:55.040 So Turing continued to study artificial intelligence, but also stuff 0:14:55.040 --> 0:14:58.160 like biological growth with the FRONTI Mark one I said 0:14:58.200 --> 0:15:00.960 that he really did put that sheen too good youth 0:15:01.080 --> 0:15:04.360 and his career was expanding into these different subject areas 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:07.520 and his recognition was also growing. He was elected as 0:15:07.520 --> 0:15:10.280 a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in March 0:15:10.360 --> 0:15:13.880 nineteen fifty one. That's another really prestigious honor. He was 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:18.560 appointed to Readership in the Theory of Computing at Manchester, 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:21.840 which sounds like a very modern title. But in nineteen 0:15:21.880 --> 0:15:24.840 fifty two things took a turn for the worse in 0:15:24.920 --> 0:15:28.400 his life after a break in in his Manchester home 0:15:28.520 --> 0:15:31.560 and he told the police that he thought the burglar 0:15:31.680 --> 0:15:34.640 was probably connected to a man he was quote having 0:15:34.680 --> 0:15:38.280 an affair with, and he had been pretty open about 0:15:38.320 --> 0:15:41.800 his sexuality since college. During his Letchley Park days, he 0:15:41.880 --> 0:15:45.600 had proposed to a colleague, Joan Clark, but broke it off. 0:15:45.600 --> 0:15:48.400 He told her that he was gay and couldn't marry her. 0:15:48.800 --> 0:15:51.920 But being so frank with the police in this way 0:15:52.000 --> 0:15:55.080 was really dangerous because at the time homosexuality was a 0:15:55.080 --> 0:15:59.000 felony in Great Britain. And so Turing was tried and 0:15:59.040 --> 0:16:03.440 convicted of growth indecency, and he was faced with a 0:16:03.480 --> 0:16:07.720 really terrible choice. Yeah. His two choices were prison or 0:16:07.880 --> 0:16:12.320 hormone injections of estrogen, so chemical sterilization. Yeah, and he 0:16:12.440 --> 0:16:16.240 chose the latter and also lost his security clearance as 0:16:16.240 --> 0:16:20.040 a result, So no government codes, no government computers. And 0:16:20.160 --> 0:16:23.480 on June seven, nineteen fifty four, he was found dead 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:26.680 by his housekeeper with a partially eaten cyanide laced apple 0:16:26.760 --> 0:16:30.120 by his side. Now, some have theorized that he was 0:16:30.160 --> 0:16:33.400 assassinated as a security risk, but it's pretty much widely 0:16:33.440 --> 0:16:36.880 accepted nowadays that Turing committed suicide, and even then, right, 0:16:36.920 --> 0:16:40.160 and it's also accepted that Turing did kill himself in 0:16:40.160 --> 0:16:43.240 in this particular way so that it would allow his 0:16:43.320 --> 0:16:46.560 mother to interpret the situation as an accident, since he'd 0:16:46.560 --> 0:16:48.720 been working with cyanide and other chemicals in his work, 0:16:49.080 --> 0:16:51.440 so she thought that he had some cyanide on his 0:16:51.520 --> 0:16:55.000 hands and he ate an apple and accidentally poisoned himself. 0:16:55.080 --> 0:16:59.320 But assuming he did commit suicide, which is what most 0:16:59.360 --> 0:17:02.920 people have feeling, it's a really tragic end to to 0:17:04.320 --> 0:17:06.920 this great life. And and at the heels of this 0:17:07.160 --> 0:17:11.600 terrible prosecution. So in two thousand nine, Prime Minister Gordon 0:17:11.680 --> 0:17:15.520 Brown issued a formal apology for the British Government's treatment 0:17:15.560 --> 0:17:18.360 of Touring, and I'm going to read just part of it. 0:17:18.800 --> 0:17:22.199 He said, Touring truly was one of those individuals we 0:17:22.240 --> 0:17:25.200 can point to whose unique contribution it helped to turn 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:27.439 the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he has 0:17:27.480 --> 0:17:30.280 owed makes it all the more horrifying. Therefore, that he 0:17:30.359 --> 0:17:33.400 was treated so inhumanely on the behalf of the British 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:36.600 government and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work, 0:17:37.000 --> 0:17:39.800 I'm very proud to say we're sorry. You deserve so 0:17:39.920 --> 0:17:43.040 much better. So two thousand twelve is Alan Turing Year, 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:46.720 and a state side recognition has been long standing. The 0:17:46.840 --> 0:17:50.080 US Association for Computer Machinery has given out the Touring 0:17:50.080 --> 0:17:54.520 Awards since nineteen sixty six, and if anything, as technology 0:17:54.560 --> 0:17:57.840 develops in new areas of steady emerge, Alan Turing will 0:17:57.880 --> 0:18:00.720 probably just become more recognized as the years on. Yeah, 0:18:00.760 --> 0:18:04.680 if you think about how many career descriptions that apply 0:18:04.760 --> 0:18:08.040 to his name, you know, father of artificial intelligence, that 0:18:08.119 --> 0:18:10.720 sort of thing that didn't exist when he was alive. 0:18:11.119 --> 0:18:13.840 We can only imagine that more will be added over 0:18:13.880 --> 0:18:18.520 the years as science and technology advances. Yeah, and we 0:18:18.600 --> 0:18:21.320 have a lot of information about this kind of stuff 0:18:21.359 --> 0:18:23.720 on our site, which we will tell you more about 0:18:23.760 --> 0:18:26.280 at the end. But if you have anything to contribute 0:18:26.320 --> 0:18:28.960 on this topic, you know anything else about Touring's research, 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:31.359 or maybe an anecdote about his life that we missed, 0:18:31.359 --> 0:18:33.760 please write us at history podcast at how staff works 0:18:33.800 --> 0:18:36.160 dot com. You can also look us up on Twitter 0:18:36.200 --> 0:18:38.760 at missed in History or on Facebook. Again. We also 0:18:38.840 --> 0:18:41.440 do have so many tech articles. You can find them 0:18:41.480 --> 0:18:44.800 by visiting our website and just going right to the 0:18:44.840 --> 0:18:48.000 tech cab and looking from there you'll find tons of 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:52.040 stuff that interests you if you are into computer science 0:18:52.119 --> 0:18:56.359 or programming or math or anything like that. All of 0:18:56.359 --> 0:19:00.240 it is on our website at www dot ho stuff 0:19:00.280 --> 0:19:10.040 works dot com. Mm hmmmm. For more on this and 0:19:10.080 --> 0:19:18.440 thousands of other topics, does it how stuff works dot com. 0:19:17.000 --> 0:19:36.440 H m hm, m m mmmm.