WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: Alan Turing, Codebreaker 0:00:02.400 --> 0:00:06.279 Hey listeners, Happy Saturday. Today we are sharing our twelve 0:00:06.400 --> 0:00:09.560 podcast on Alan Touring, and this one comes from past 0:00:09.600 --> 0:00:13.080 hosts Sarah and Bablina. We also have an update to 0:00:13.119 --> 0:00:16.400 this episode and twenty third team. Alan Turing was granted 0:00:16.400 --> 0:00:19.040 a royal pardon for his nineteen fifty two conviction for 0:00:19.160 --> 0:00:24.319 gross indecency. That pardon came into effect on December, and 0:00:24.360 --> 0:00:28.120 while this posthumous pardon was generally praised, it was also 0:00:28.200 --> 0:00:32.320 criticized because thousands of other men had faced similar convictions, 0:00:32.840 --> 0:00:36.159 but when Alan Touring was pardoned, they were not. However, 0:00:36.640 --> 0:00:40.080 a law nicknamed the Alan Touring Law received royal assent 0:00:40.120 --> 0:00:43.560 in ten and that paved the way to pardon men, 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:46.960 primarily gay and bisexual men, who had been convicted of 0:00:47.000 --> 0:00:50.280 these types of crimes under laws that have since been abolished, 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:55.400 and a mass pardon followed in January of it did 0:00:55.440 --> 0:01:00.440 include other previous podcast subject Oscar Wilde. At that point, 0:01:00.640 --> 0:01:03.960 about fifteen thousand of the sixty five thousand men who 0:01:04.000 --> 0:01:07.360 had been convicted under these now repealed laws, we're actually 0:01:07.360 --> 0:01:13.920 still living. So listening for Alan Touring. Welcome to Stuff 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:24.440 you missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, 0:01:24.520 --> 0:01:26.920 and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm 0:01:26.959 --> 0:01:29.520 Deblina Choker Boarding and today we're going to be talking 0:01:29.560 --> 0:01:34.399 about Alan Turing. And he's considered the father of computer science, 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:38.160 the father of artificial intelligence, and also one of the 0:01:38.200 --> 0:01:41.640 most important wartime code breakers in World War Two. So 0:01:42.319 --> 0:01:45.399 quite a resume just right off the bat there, and 0:01:45.680 --> 0:01:48.720 for listeners with a more literary bent, he's also been 0:01:48.760 --> 0:01:51.560 called the Shelley of Science, which is a name I 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:53.800 kind of took a shine to you. Yeah, and others 0:01:53.800 --> 0:01:57.640 have too. He's been a really popular podcast suggestion. Though 0:01:57.760 --> 0:02:00.840 his resumes focus on math and technology has always kind 0:02:00.840 --> 0:02:02.760 of scared us off a little bit. I think, I 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:07.640 mean things like number theory, probability, computer programs, stung our 0:02:07.800 --> 0:02:11.440 usual subject matter stuff. I'm I'm honestly a little scared 0:02:11.480 --> 0:02:15.200 to get into too deeply. But fortunately some of his 0:02:15.240 --> 0:02:19.120 work really transcends the arcane. It's it's understandable if you 0:02:19.400 --> 0:02:22.160 put some effort into it, and there's a wealth of 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:25.280 biographical materials to which I feel like the last few 0:02:25.320 --> 0:02:27.680 podcasts I've done that has not been the case. It 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:30.080 was a little it was a little refreshing really to 0:02:30.200 --> 0:02:32.720 research Alan Turing and know that there's so much out 0:02:32.720 --> 0:02:36.200 there about this man. There are m I T lectures, 0:02:36.280 --> 0:02:39.520 there's a digital archive at Alan Turing dot net. Their 0:02:39.600 --> 0:02:43.120 articles in just about every science journal you can name, 0:02:43.520 --> 0:02:46.639 and there's a House Stuff Works podcast too. Yeah, Jonathan 0:02:46.639 --> 0:02:49.360 and Chris talked about Tern's life lass fall on Tech 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:51.680 Stuff and so that's a great place to turn if 0:02:51.720 --> 0:02:53.919 you want to a little more of an in depth 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:58.919 discussion on programming. Yeah, specifically, I was glad though that 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:02.280 even they amitted that the math was kind of tricky 0:03:02.360 --> 0:03:05.800 to discuss. It's just so high level. But they do 0:03:05.919 --> 0:03:08.600 really do a good job covering the programming and in 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:12.400 that side of turning story. But it's also June, which 0:03:12.480 --> 0:03:15.440 is Pride Month, and that's why we've picked Turing for 0:03:15.600 --> 0:03:20.120 today's topic. He's a great, if tragic example of a 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:24.200 remarkable man, really a genius whose life was so clearly 0:03:24.360 --> 0:03:27.840 defined by his homosexuality and reminded me a lot of 0:03:27.880 --> 0:03:31.280 Oscar Wilde, who Katie and I covered last year for 0:03:31.360 --> 0:03:34.720 Pride Months. He was another man who was really destroyed 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:38.440 by prejudice at the absolute height of his achievements. So 0:03:39.040 --> 0:03:42.280 it's a great story to learn about and it's it's 0:03:42.280 --> 0:03:45.040 good to know about Turing's achievements, but it is also 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:48.080 a really, really sad story. Yeah it is. But before 0:03:48.120 --> 0:03:49.960 we get to that, we're going to start sort of 0:03:50.000 --> 0:03:52.880 with the beginnings of his life. Alan Mathison Turing was 0:03:52.960 --> 0:03:57.320 born June twelve in London to a member of the 0:03:57.360 --> 0:04:01.080 Indian civil service. His father actually served in the Madrass 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:03.920 presidency and his mother's father was the chief engineer of 0:04:03.920 --> 0:04:07.800 the Madrass Railways, but Turning didn't grow up in India. Instead, 0:04:07.840 --> 0:04:09.960 his parents had the kids fostered in British homes, which, 0:04:09.960 --> 0:04:12.880 as you can imagine, was pretty lonely, and his parents 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:15.920 didn't even come back to England until ninety, not until 0:04:15.960 --> 0:04:19.520 his dad retired. So he spent prep school trying to 0:04:19.600 --> 0:04:22.560 do as much science and math as he could get 0:04:22.560 --> 0:04:26.000 away with, which at the time it wasn't really the agenda. 0:04:26.279 --> 0:04:29.039 I guess he would be an outstanding student these days, 0:04:29.120 --> 0:04:33.080 but his skepticism and his curiosity also sometimes got him 0:04:33.080 --> 0:04:36.560 in trouble with with the authority figures at school. But 0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:40.160 in nineteen twenty eight he had his first experience of 0:04:40.600 --> 0:04:44.880 true intellectual stimulation. He made friends with a boy who 0:04:45.000 --> 0:04:49.160 was one year ahead of him, Christopher morecam and Jonathan 0:04:49.160 --> 0:04:51.680 and Chris. The way they explained this, I really liked 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:55.080 it the way they explained the friendship. Essentially, the two 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:58.560 kids could bounce ideas off of each other and combine 0:04:58.600 --> 0:05:00.919 what they knew and really come away from it with 0:05:00.960 --> 0:05:04.560 a deeper understanding. So sort of a friendship of two 0:05:04.600 --> 0:05:09.599 minds that was really influential in the young Churing's life. Yeah. 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:13.480 So when Morcomb died suddenly in nineteen thirty teenage Churning 0:05:13.640 --> 0:05:16.640 was left wondering what happened to Markham's consciousness. He was 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:19.839 pretty devastated and and wanted to explore that idea further. 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:22.279 So for three years he wrote letters to Morkholm's mother 0:05:22.680 --> 0:05:25.719 trying to figure out the relationship between mind and matter. 0:05:26.160 --> 0:05:28.839 And that's a quest that would later define his work 0:05:28.880 --> 0:05:30.920 and artificial intelligence, which you're going to talk about a 0:05:30.920 --> 0:05:32.600 little more in a few minutes. Yeah, I will definitely 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:35.440 be talking about that. But in October nineteen thirty one, 0:05:35.480 --> 0:05:38.000 so while he's really in the middle of his grief 0:05:38.160 --> 0:05:43.000 and and this new look into the relationship between mind 0:05:43.040 --> 0:05:46.479 and matter, he goes off to college King's College, Cambridge, 0:05:46.560 --> 0:05:49.680 and of course he studies math, and it was really 0:05:49.720 --> 0:05:53.000 a different inspiring environment for him to one where he 0:05:53.040 --> 0:05:56.719 could think creatively. He could study things like philosophy and 0:05:56.800 --> 0:06:01.720 economics and surround himself by intel people, and also recognized 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:05.880 his own sexuality, and he socialized with some of the 0:06:05.880 --> 0:06:10.440 anti war intellectual circle. But his politics weren't really sharply 0:06:10.520 --> 0:06:13.520 defined during this period. His main recreation was athletic. He 0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:18.320 liked running and rowing and sailing, and of course doing math. Yeah, 0:06:18.400 --> 0:06:21.520 by nineteen thirty four he had received a distinguished degree, 0:06:21.560 --> 0:06:24.359 and by nineteen thirty five, at age twenty two, he 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:27.680 got a fellowship to King's College. So well on this 0:06:27.760 --> 0:06:31.080 intellectual path of his. But it was in nineteen thirty 0:06:31.120 --> 0:06:35.400 five that Turing started tackling and intriguing mathematical question, and 0:06:35.440 --> 0:06:39.200 that's the question of decidability. And during that process he 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:43.360 envisions a machine that could complete computational operations just like 0:06:43.400 --> 0:06:46.839 the human brain. The Turing machine at that point was 0:06:47.040 --> 0:06:50.160 purely theoretical, but it could perform any kind of operation 0:06:50.200 --> 0:06:53.679 it was programmed to do. Play chess, calculate numbers, anything 0:06:53.760 --> 0:06:56.960 like that. And that idea develops into the idea of 0:06:57.000 --> 0:07:00.800 a universal Turing machine, which could hand any task, and 0:07:00.880 --> 0:07:04.239 individual Touring machine could. So for example, if the Turing 0:07:04.279 --> 0:07:07.839 machine is the early computer program, the universal machine would 0:07:07.839 --> 0:07:10.560 be the early computer, the one machine that can do 0:07:10.680 --> 0:07:13.400 any task as programmed to do. Yeah, and a guy 0:07:13.480 --> 0:07:17.800 named b. Jack Copeland described the significance of this creation 0:07:17.920 --> 0:07:19.720 in an M. I. T. Lecture. And it really helped 0:07:19.720 --> 0:07:23.640 me understand how important it was, because it might seem 0:07:23.680 --> 0:07:26.000 a little old hat if you if you just look 0:07:26.040 --> 0:07:29.440 at it like a computer or computer program, he said. Nowadays, 0:07:29.480 --> 0:07:33.040 when nearly everyone owns the physical realization of a universal 0:07:33.040 --> 0:07:36.880 Turing machine, Turing's idea of a one stop shop computing 0:07:36.880 --> 0:07:39.960 machine is apt to seem as obvious as the wheel. 0:07:40.440 --> 0:07:43.360 But in nineteen thirty six, engineers thought in terms of 0:07:43.400 --> 0:07:48.040 building specific machines for particular purposes. So this was really 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:51.480 a revolutionary idea at the time. And of course some 0:07:51.600 --> 0:07:55.360 people realize that, but not everyone knew the full implications 0:07:55.400 --> 0:07:59.120 of of what this idea would eventually come to. Yeah, 0:07:59.120 --> 0:08:01.080 and it would be more than a decade before the 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:04.960 physical realization of a touring machine was actually built. Until then, 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:08.200 Touring continued continued his studies at Princeton and then returned 0:08:08.240 --> 0:08:11.080 to England and Cambridge before the outbreak of World War Two, 0:08:11.480 --> 0:08:13.080 and then on the first full day of the war 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:16.200 he joined the Government Code and Cipher School, whose headquarters 0:08:16.240 --> 0:08:19.040 were at the now famous Bletchley Park in London. Yeah, 0:08:19.040 --> 0:08:22.680 and the g CCS was busy bringing together all of 0:08:22.680 --> 0:08:26.200 the country's top minds at this point, so mathematicians like Touring, 0:08:26.200 --> 0:08:30.920 that also chess players and Egyptologists, all sorts of smart 0:08:31.000 --> 0:08:34.160 people with different kinds of skills, anyone who they hoped 0:08:34.280 --> 0:08:37.720 might lend insight into breaking German codes, which was what 0:08:37.840 --> 0:08:40.280 they were all about in the Chief Code at the time. 0:08:40.320 --> 0:08:43.160 The one that was really giving them the most trouble 0:08:43.480 --> 0:08:47.920 was the Enigma, and Polish Cryptanalysis had been working on 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:50.800 the Enigma for a really long time since nineteen thirty two, 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:54.320 and they had created a code breaking machine called the 0:08:54.360 --> 0:08:58.320 bomba a few years after that, but by nineteen thirty nine, 0:08:58.360 --> 0:09:01.240 Touring and others were helping to create a new machine, 0:09:01.280 --> 0:09:04.320 one that could adapt to the Enigma because it got 0:09:04.320 --> 0:09:07.520 to where the Germans were changing the codes every twenty 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:10.679 four hours pretty much. So he helped develop a new 0:09:10.720 --> 0:09:15.640 machine called the bomb which could decipher loofafa Enigma communications. 0:09:15.760 --> 0:09:19.359 There's a really neat British Heritage article by Gene Paskey 0:09:19.520 --> 0:09:22.680 about Bletchley Park, which I recommend if you just sort 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:23.920 of want to get a picture of it. We were 0:09:23.960 --> 0:09:27.199 actually talking about this might be a good episode in itself, 0:09:27.240 --> 0:09:29.920 but I hope we don't give too much away. It 0:09:30.000 --> 0:09:34.520 nicely describes rooms full of these machines and the operators 0:09:34.520 --> 0:09:37.240 who maintain them. And in case you think that they're 0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:41.880 little tiny devices like we're used to today, little electronic devices, 0:09:41.920 --> 0:09:44.920 they're not in any sense like that. They are large 0:09:45.120 --> 0:09:48.920 mechanical machines that required a lot of upkeep. They had 0:09:48.960 --> 0:09:53.000 to be kept clean, um they were. They took up 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:56.839 the room essentially. So these really big machines. They helped 0:09:56.920 --> 0:10:00.520 crack the Air Force Enigma, but the German naval Enigma 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:03.480 was kind of a tougher nut to crack and also 0:10:03.559 --> 0:10:06.720 critical for winning the Battle of the Atlantic. So Turing 0:10:06.760 --> 0:10:09.320 had worked out part of the code in nineteen thirty nine, 0:10:09.320 --> 0:10:11.920 but the big break in the situation came courtesy of 0:10:11.960 --> 0:10:15.440 the Royal Navy when they captured an Enigma machine and 0:10:15.600 --> 0:10:18.760 code book from a U boat. So by June one 0:10:18.920 --> 0:10:21.920 U boat traffic was decipherable. Yeah, they had cracked the code, 0:10:22.000 --> 0:10:25.880 and by early nineteen forty two, Bletchley Park was decoding 0:10:26.040 --> 0:10:29.679 thirty nine thousand German transmissions a month, and of course 0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:33.680 some of those were complaints about the underwear splitting down 0:10:33.679 --> 0:10:35.840 the middle and that type of thing, but also some 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:40.080 really serious communications in there. It rose to an eventual 0:10:40.480 --> 0:10:45.720 eighty four thousand transmissions a month, so pretty astonishing figure. 0:10:45.880 --> 0:10:49.240 And with the nineteen forty three breaking of Germany's high 0:10:49.320 --> 0:10:53.920 level binary teleprinter code, which was what Hitler himself used, 0:10:53.920 --> 0:10:57.880 and high members of his government um Churchill, was able 0:10:57.920 --> 0:11:01.280 to read Hitler's mail before or Hitler could read it. 0:11:01.320 --> 0:11:05.439 According to Posh's article, something I thought was interesting and 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:08.199 something I never knew about Bletchley Park. Yeah, me neither. 0:11:08.440 --> 0:11:10.640 But it turns out the combined efforts of Bletchley Park 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:13.840 shortened the war by two years, and for his part, 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:16.840 Turing received the Order of the British Empire, which was 0:11:17.040 --> 0:11:27.000 one of the most prestigious awards you could get. Yeah. 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:29.240 And so after the war he's looking for a new 0:11:29.360 --> 0:11:33.240 job and he was recruited to the National Physics Laboratory, 0:11:33.280 --> 0:11:37.280 and the task, conveniently enough, was to design and build 0:11:37.360 --> 0:11:41.559 an electronic computer so essentially a real Turing machine seems 0:11:41.600 --> 0:11:43.520 like just the guy to bring in to do this. 0:11:43.720 --> 0:11:47.160 And he called his new design the Automatic Computing Engine, 0:11:47.200 --> 0:11:50.840 which has the lovely acronym ACE. But it made a 0:11:50.840 --> 0:11:54.600 good computer, uh, and it was a really ambitious advanced 0:11:55.080 --> 0:11:57.200 design it. If it had been built, it would have 0:11:57.240 --> 0:12:00.920 had the memory capacity of an early MAX. So that's 0:12:00.960 --> 0:12:04.280 pretty astounding if he consider this immediately after a World 0:12:04.280 --> 0:12:07.480 War Two. Yeah, but things moved more slowly than they 0:12:07.480 --> 0:12:10.040 had at Bletchley Park. There was lots of red tape 0:12:10.080 --> 0:12:12.960 to deal with, and Turing's colleagues thought that the original 0:12:13.120 --> 0:12:16.480 ACE design was too much and opted for a smaller machine, 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:20.080 which was called the Pilot Model ACE. So part of 0:12:20.080 --> 0:12:24.280 the problem here was that Turing's wartime achievements were unrecognized 0:12:24.360 --> 0:12:27.400 due to their secrecy. Yeah, he couldn't go out and say, well, 0:12:27.520 --> 0:12:30.360 guys at Bletchley Park, I did this. I mean, he 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:33.480 couldn't talk about any of that stuff. Yeah, he couldn't 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:36.880 brag on himself. So to relieve the frustration and the 0:12:36.880 --> 0:12:40.319 stress of the situation, he started long distance running. And 0:12:40.400 --> 0:12:43.200 it took an injury actually to prevent him from qualifying 0:12:43.240 --> 0:12:46.000 for the nine Olympic Marathon team. So he was pretty 0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:48.319 good at it. It's really good at it. It's it's 0:12:48.360 --> 0:12:50.559 one of those I don't know, it's like a cherry 0:12:50.559 --> 0:12:52.800 on top for somebody with so many talents that they 0:12:52.800 --> 0:12:54.920 would also be an amazing athlete. Well, I was going 0:12:54.960 --> 0:12:56.960 to say, it's almost not fair, but you're kinder than 0:12:57.000 --> 0:13:01.000 I am, obviously. Yeah, well, whatever way you look at it. 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:04.840 But by this point, delays meant that the National Physics 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:08.000 Laboratory wasn't going to be the first place that built 0:13:08.040 --> 0:13:13.080 the first working electronics stored program digital computer. That honor 0:13:13.120 --> 0:13:18.400 went to Manchester University and it happened in June. So 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:22.360 Turing obviously frustrated by his his time at the National 0:13:22.360 --> 0:13:24.680 Physics Laboratory, and they got beat out. Yeah, they got 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:29.040 beat out. He wasn't really listened to his achievements and 0:13:29.080 --> 0:13:34.120 accomplishments weren't really appreciated to the the level they deserved 0:13:34.160 --> 0:13:37.560 to be. So he went to work in Manchester, oddly 0:13:37.679 --> 0:13:41.360 enough as the deputy director even though there was no 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:46.080 director of the program. Kind of a strange little detail there. Yeah, 0:13:46.080 --> 0:13:49.160 but he designed the programming system of the Ferronti Mark one, 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:53.240 the first commercially available digital electronic computer. So hopefully that 0:13:53.280 --> 0:13:57.000 was a little solace for him. Consolation programs. Yeah. Um. 0:13:57.080 --> 0:13:59.560 And it was also during his time at Manchester that 0:13:59.640 --> 0:14:03.800 Turing started to hypothesize about what would later be known 0:14:03.840 --> 0:14:07.080 as artificial intelligence. And and I thought it was it 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:09.880 was interesting, and this is something that's kind of, I guess, 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:13.400 difficult for me to talk about with my limited knowledge 0:14:13.400 --> 0:14:16.600 of computer programming and science. I just work on a computer. 0:14:16.679 --> 0:14:20.360 I don't know what happens inside. But I was impressed 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:25.200 that Um, even though he had he had the skill 0:14:25.280 --> 0:14:28.680 to work on developing this field, he put the machine 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:30.800 to use right away, so I'm sure he was still 0:14:30.840 --> 0:14:33.480 considering about how it could be advanced. But he started 0:14:33.520 --> 0:14:36.440 looking for ways to use the Ferronti mark one, which 0:14:36.480 --> 0:14:38.560 I thought was was pretty neat. Yeah. It kind of 0:14:38.600 --> 0:14:41.120 went back to his old interest in the connection between 0:14:41.200 --> 0:14:44.440 mind and matter. And in nineteen fifty Touring wrote a 0:14:44.440 --> 0:14:48.360 paper called Computing, Machinery and Intelligence in the journal Mind. 0:14:49.000 --> 0:14:52.880 In it, he proposed something called an imitation test. Today 0:14:52.920 --> 0:14:56.800 that's called the Turing test, and the test basically provided 0:14:56.840 --> 0:14:59.560 a way to judge the intelligence of a machine without 0:14:59.640 --> 0:15:02.840 bio us so an interrogator, for example, would sit in 0:15:02.880 --> 0:15:06.720 an isolated room from two subjects, one a person, one 0:15:06.760 --> 0:15:10.320 a machine, and the interrogator would ask them both questions 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:13.200 and if the interrogator couldn't tell who was who, then 0:15:13.240 --> 0:15:17.400 that meant the machine was thinking. Yeah, it had intelligence 0:15:17.480 --> 0:15:21.360 in some definable way. And Turing even predicted he had 0:15:21.400 --> 0:15:24.320 a lot of confidence in computers. He predicted that by 0:15:24.440 --> 0:15:27.800 the year two thousand, a computer would be so good 0:15:27.840 --> 0:15:32.280 at this game this, this uh Turing test, an interrogator 0:15:32.320 --> 0:15:35.480 would not have more than a seventy percent chance of 0:15:35.520 --> 0:15:39.400 correctly identifying who is who after five minutes. And that 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:44.359 is a very ambitious goal because according to Encyclopedia Britannica, 0:15:44.680 --> 0:15:48.480 no computer today has even come close to that standard. 0:15:48.560 --> 0:15:51.520 But Turing really he did have a lot of hopes 0:15:51.560 --> 0:15:55.760 for computers. Yeah. He also hypothesized that one day, quote, 0:15:55.840 --> 0:15:58.440 ladies would take their computers for walks in the park 0:15:58.560 --> 0:16:01.200 and tell each other, my little computer said such a 0:16:01.200 --> 0:16:03.360 funny thing in the morning. I think we're a little 0:16:03.400 --> 0:16:07.280 closer to that one than the seventy goal. Maybe I 0:16:07.280 --> 0:16:10.640 don't know. I still like my doggy though. Yeah. So 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:14.720 Turn continued to study artificial intelligence, but also stuff like 0:16:14.760 --> 0:16:17.920 biological growth with the FRONTI Mark one I said that 0:16:17.960 --> 0:16:20.760 he really did put that machine to good use, and 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:24.080 his career was expanding into these different subject areas and 0:16:24.080 --> 0:16:27.200 his recognition was also growing. He was elected as a 0:16:27.280 --> 0:16:30.320 Fellow of the Royal Society of London in March nineteen 0:16:30.360 --> 0:16:34.520 fifty one. That's another really prestigious honor. He was appointed 0:16:34.560 --> 0:16:38.440 to Readership in the Theory of Computing at Manchester, which 0:16:38.440 --> 0:16:41.840 sounds like a very modern title. But in nineteen fifty 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:44.600 two things took a turn for the worse in his 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:48.240 life after a break in in his Manchester home and 0:16:48.600 --> 0:16:51.400 he told the police that he thought the burglar was 0:16:51.440 --> 0:16:54.400 probably connected to a man he was quote having an 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:58.000 affair with, and he had been pretty open about his 0:16:58.040 --> 0:17:01.680 sexuality since college. During his Letchley Park days, he had 0:17:01.920 --> 0:17:05.160 proposed to a colleague, Joan Clark, but broke it off 0:17:05.240 --> 0:17:08.359 he told her that he was gay and couldn't marry her. 0:17:08.400 --> 0:17:11.520 But being so frank with the police in this way 0:17:11.640 --> 0:17:14.680 was really dangerous because at the time homosexuality was a 0:17:14.680 --> 0:17:18.600 felony in Great Britain, and so Turing was tried and 0:17:18.640 --> 0:17:23.040 convicted of gross indecency and he was faced with a 0:17:23.080 --> 0:17:27.320 really terrible choice. Yeah, His two choices were prison or 0:17:27.480 --> 0:17:31.919 hormone injections of estrogen, so chemical sterilization. Yeah, and he 0:17:32.040 --> 0:17:35.840 chose the latter and also lost his security clearance as 0:17:35.840 --> 0:17:39.639 a result. So no government codes, no government computers. And 0:17:39.760 --> 0:17:43.240 on June seven, ninety four, he was found dead by 0:17:43.240 --> 0:17:46.520 his housekeeper with a partially eaten cyanide laced apple by 0:17:46.520 --> 0:17:50.440 his side. Now, some have theorized that he was assassinated 0:17:50.480 --> 0:17:53.480 as a security risk, but it's pretty much widely accepted 0:17:53.480 --> 0:17:56.600 nowadays that Turing committed suicide, and even then, right, and 0:17:56.640 --> 0:18:00.040 it's also accepted that Turing did kill himself in this 0:18:00.200 --> 0:18:03.480 particular way, so that it would allow his mother to 0:18:03.520 --> 0:18:06.560 interpret the situation as an accident, since he'd been working 0:18:06.560 --> 0:18:08.840 with cyanide and other chemicals in his work. Yea, so 0:18:08.880 --> 0:18:11.560 she thought that he had some cyanide on his hands 0:18:11.680 --> 0:18:15.680 and he ate an apple and accidentally poisoned himself. But uh, 0:18:16.160 --> 0:18:19.639 assuming he did commit suicide, which is what most people assume, 0:18:19.760 --> 0:18:24.959 it's a really tragic end to to this great life 0:18:25.000 --> 0:18:35.840 and and at the heels of this terrible prosecution. So 0:18:35.960 --> 0:18:39.720 in two thousand nine, Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:43.320 formal apology for the British Government's treatment of Touring, and 0:18:43.880 --> 0:18:46.160 I'm going to read just part of it. He said, 0:18:46.359 --> 0:18:49.720 Touring truly was one of those individuals we can point 0:18:49.760 --> 0:18:52.560 to whose unique contribution it helped to turn the tide 0:18:52.560 --> 0:18:55.199 of war. The dead of gratitude he's owed makes it 0:18:55.240 --> 0:18:57.959 all the more horrifying. Therefore, that he was treated so 0:18:58.119 --> 0:19:01.120 inhumanely on the behalf of the British government and all 0:19:01.160 --> 0:19:04.400 those who live freely thanks to Alan's work, I'm very 0:19:04.440 --> 0:19:07.359 proud to say we're sorry. You deserve so much better. 0:19:07.680 --> 0:19:10.800 So two thousand twelve is Alan Turing Year, and a 0:19:10.880 --> 0:19:14.800 state side recognition has been longstanding. The US Association for 0:19:14.880 --> 0:19:18.120 Computer Machinery has given out the Touring Awards since nineteen 0:19:18.160 --> 0:19:22.240 sixty six, and if anything, as technology develops in new 0:19:22.280 --> 0:19:25.720 areas of steady emerge, Alan Turing will probably just become 0:19:25.760 --> 0:19:27.960 more recognized as the years go on. Yeah, if you 0:19:28.000 --> 0:19:32.280 think about how many career descriptions that apply to his name, 0:19:32.640 --> 0:19:35.520 you know, father of artificial intelligence, that sort of thing 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:38.600 that didn't exist when he was alive. We can only 0:19:38.640 --> 0:19:41.800 imagine that more will be added over the years as 0:19:42.320 --> 0:19:52.560 science and technology advances. Thank you so much for joining 0:19:52.640 --> 0:19:55.560 us for this Saturday classic. Since this is out of 0:19:55.600 --> 0:19:58.080 the archive, if you heard an email address or a 0:19:58.119 --> 0:20:00.679 Facebook U r L or something similar are during the 0:20:00.680 --> 0:20:03.439 course of the show, that may be obsolete now, so 0:20:03.480 --> 0:20:07.399 here's our current contact information. We are at history Podcasts 0:20:07.400 --> 0:20:09.359 at how stuff works dot com, and then we're at 0:20:09.480 --> 0:20:12.879 missed in the History. All over social media that is 0:20:12.880 --> 0:20:17.400 our name on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram. Thanks 0:20:17.440 --> 0:20:22.720 again for listening. For more on this and thousands of 0:20:22.760 --> 0:20:33.200 other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.