Speaker 1: Hey listeners, Happy Saturday. Today we are sharing our twelve
Speaker 1: podcast on Alan Touring, and this one comes from past
Speaker 1: hosts Sarah and Bablina. We also have an update to
Speaker 1: this episode and twenty third team. Alan Turing was granted
Speaker 1: a royal pardon for his nineteen fifty two conviction for
Speaker 1: gross indecency. That pardon came into effect on December, and
Speaker 1: while this posthumous pardon was generally praised, it was also
Speaker 1: criticized because thousands of other men had faced similar convictions,
Speaker 1: but when Alan Touring was pardoned, they were not. However,
Speaker 1: a law nicknamed the Alan Touring Law received royal assent
Speaker 1: in ten and that paved the way to pardon men,
Speaker 1: primarily gay and bisexual men, who had been convicted of
Speaker 1: these types of crimes under laws that have since been abolished,
Speaker 1: and a mass pardon followed in January of it did
Speaker 1: include other previous podcast subject Oscar Wilde. At that point,
Speaker 1: about fifteen thousand of the sixty five thousand men who
Speaker 1: had been convicted under these now repealed laws, we're actually
Speaker 1: still living. So listening for Alan Touring. Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: you missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm
Speaker 1: Deblina Choker Boarding and today we're going to be talking
Speaker 1: about Alan Turing. And he's considered the father of computer science,
Speaker 1: the father of artificial intelligence, and also one of the
Speaker 1: most important wartime code breakers in World War Two. So
Speaker 1: quite a resume just right off the bat there, and
Speaker 1: for listeners with a more literary bent, he's also been
Speaker 1: called the Shelley of Science, which is a name I
Speaker 1: kind of took a shine to you. Yeah, and others
Speaker 1: have too. He's been a really popular podcast suggestion. Though
Speaker 1: his resumes focus on math and technology has always kind
Speaker 1: of scared us off a little bit. I think, I
Speaker 1: mean things like number theory, probability, computer programs, stung our
Speaker 1: usual subject matter stuff. I'm I'm honestly a little scared
Speaker 1: to get into too deeply. But fortunately some of his
Speaker 1: work really transcends the arcane. It's it's understandable if you
Speaker 1: put some effort into it, and there's a wealth of
Speaker 1: biographical materials to which I feel like the last few
Speaker 1: podcasts I've done that has not been the case. It
Speaker 1: was a little it was a little refreshing really to
Speaker 1: research Alan Turing and know that there's so much out
Speaker 1: there about this man. There are m I T lectures,
Speaker 1: there's a digital archive at Alan Turing dot net. Their
Speaker 1: articles in just about every science journal you can name,
Speaker 1: and there's a House Stuff Works podcast too. Yeah, Jonathan
Speaker 1: and Chris talked about Tern's life lass fall on Tech
Speaker 1: Stuff and so that's a great place to turn if
Speaker 1: you want to a little more of an in depth
Speaker 1: discussion on programming. Yeah, specifically, I was glad though that
Speaker 1: even they amitted that the math was kind of tricky
Speaker 1: to discuss. It's just so high level. But they do
Speaker 1: really do a good job covering the programming and in
Speaker 1: that side of turning story. But it's also June, which
Speaker 1: is Pride Month, and that's why we've picked Turing for
Speaker 1: today's topic. He's a great, if tragic example of a
Speaker 1: remarkable man, really a genius whose life was so clearly
Speaker 1: defined by his homosexuality and reminded me a lot of
Speaker 1: Oscar Wilde, who Katie and I covered last year for
Speaker 1: Pride Months. He was another man who was really destroyed
Speaker 1: by prejudice at the absolute height of his achievements. So
Speaker 1: it's a great story to learn about and it's it's
Speaker 1: good to know about Turing's achievements, but it is also
Speaker 1: a really, really sad story. Yeah it is. But before
Speaker 1: we get to that, we're going to start sort of
Speaker 1: with the beginnings of his life. Alan Mathison Turing was
Speaker 1: born June twelve in London to a member of the
Speaker 1: Indian civil service. His father actually served in the Madrass
Speaker 1: presidency and his mother's father was the chief engineer of
Speaker 1: the Madrass Railways, but Turning didn't grow up in India. Instead,
Speaker 1: his parents had the kids fostered in British homes, which,
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, was pretty lonely, and his parents
Speaker 1: didn't even come back to England until ninety, not until
Speaker 1: his dad retired. So he spent prep school trying to
Speaker 1: do as much science and math as he could get
Speaker 1: away with, which at the time it wasn't really the agenda.
Speaker 1: I guess he would be an outstanding student these days,
Speaker 1: but his skepticism and his curiosity also sometimes got him
Speaker 1: in trouble with with the authority figures at school. But
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty eight he had his first experience of
Speaker 1: true intellectual stimulation. He made friends with a boy who
Speaker 1: was one year ahead of him, Christopher morecam and Jonathan
Speaker 1: and Chris. The way they explained this, I really liked
Speaker 1: it the way they explained the friendship. Essentially, the two
Speaker 1: kids could bounce ideas off of each other and combine
Speaker 1: what they knew and really come away from it with
Speaker 1: a deeper understanding. So sort of a friendship of two
Speaker 1: minds that was really influential in the young Churing's life. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So when Morcomb died suddenly in nineteen thirty teenage Churning
Speaker 1: was left wondering what happened to Markham's consciousness. He was
Speaker 1: pretty devastated and and wanted to explore that idea further.
Speaker 1: So for three years he wrote letters to Morkholm's mother
Speaker 1: trying to figure out the relationship between mind and matter.
Speaker 1: And that's a quest that would later define his work
Speaker 1: and artificial intelligence, which you're going to talk about a
Speaker 1: little more in a few minutes. Yeah, I will definitely
Speaker 1: be talking about that. But in October nineteen thirty one,
Speaker 1: so while he's really in the middle of his grief
Speaker 1: and and this new look into the relationship between mind
Speaker 1: and matter, he goes off to college King's College, Cambridge,
Speaker 1: and of course he studies math, and it was really
Speaker 1: a different inspiring environment for him to one where he
Speaker 1: could think creatively. He could study things like philosophy and
Speaker 1: economics and surround himself by intel people, and also recognized
Speaker 1: his own sexuality, and he socialized with some of the
Speaker 1: anti war intellectual circle. But his politics weren't really sharply
Speaker 1: defined during this period. His main recreation was athletic. He
Speaker 1: liked running and rowing and sailing, and of course doing math. Yeah,
Speaker 1: by nineteen thirty four he had received a distinguished degree,
Speaker 1: and by nineteen thirty five, at age twenty two, he
Speaker 1: got a fellowship to King's College. So well on this
Speaker 1: intellectual path of his. But it was in nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: five that Turing started tackling and intriguing mathematical question, and
Speaker 1: that's the question of decidability. And during that process he
Speaker 1: envisions a machine that could complete computational operations just like
Speaker 1: the human brain. The Turing machine at that point was
Speaker 1: purely theoretical, but it could perform any kind of operation
Speaker 1: it was programmed to do. Play chess, calculate numbers, anything
Speaker 1: like that. And that idea develops into the idea of
Speaker 1: a universal Turing machine, which could hand any task, and
Speaker 1: individual Touring machine could. So for example, if the Turing
Speaker 1: machine is the early computer program, the universal machine would
Speaker 1: be the early computer, the one machine that can do
Speaker 1: any task as programmed to do. Yeah, and a guy
Speaker 1: named b. Jack Copeland described the significance of this creation
Speaker 1: in an M. I. T. Lecture. And it really helped
Speaker 1: me understand how important it was, because it might seem
Speaker 1: a little old hat if you if you just look
Speaker 1: at it like a computer or computer program, he said. Nowadays,
Speaker 1: when nearly everyone owns the physical realization of a universal
Speaker 1: Turing machine, Turing's idea of a one stop shop computing
Speaker 1: machine is apt to seem as obvious as the wheel.
Speaker 1: But in nineteen thirty six, engineers thought in terms of
Speaker 1: building specific machines for particular purposes. So this was really
Speaker 1: a revolutionary idea at the time. And of course some
Speaker 1: people realize that, but not everyone knew the full implications
Speaker 1: of of what this idea would eventually come to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it would be more than a decade before the
Speaker 1: physical realization of a touring machine was actually built. Until then,
Speaker 1: Touring continued continued his studies at Princeton and then returned
Speaker 1: to England and Cambridge before the outbreak of World War Two,
Speaker 1: and then on the first full day of the war
Speaker 1: he joined the Government Code and Cipher School, whose headquarters
Speaker 1: were at the now famous Bletchley Park in London. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the g CCS was busy bringing together all of
Speaker 1: the country's top minds at this point, so mathematicians like Touring,
Speaker 1: that also chess players and Egyptologists, all sorts of smart
Speaker 1: people with different kinds of skills, anyone who they hoped
Speaker 1: might lend insight into breaking German codes, which was what
Speaker 1: they were all about in the Chief Code at the time.
Speaker 1: The one that was really giving them the most trouble
Speaker 1: was the Enigma, and Polish Cryptanalysis had been working on
Speaker 1: the Enigma for a really long time since nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 1: and they had created a code breaking machine called the
Speaker 1: bomba a few years after that, but by nineteen thirty nine,
Speaker 1: Touring and others were helping to create a new machine,
Speaker 1: one that could adapt to the Enigma because it got
Speaker 1: to where the Germans were changing the codes every twenty
Speaker 1: four hours pretty much. So he helped develop a new
Speaker 1: machine called the bomb which could decipher loofafa Enigma communications.
Speaker 1: There's a really neat British Heritage article by Gene Paskey
Speaker 1: about Bletchley Park, which I recommend if you just sort
Speaker 1: of want to get a picture of it. We were
Speaker 1: actually talking about this might be a good episode in itself,
Speaker 1: but I hope we don't give too much away. It
Speaker 1: nicely describes rooms full of these machines and the operators
Speaker 1: who maintain them. And in case you think that they're
Speaker 1: little tiny devices like we're used to today, little electronic devices,
Speaker 1: they're not in any sense like that. They are large
Speaker 1: mechanical machines that required a lot of upkeep. They had
Speaker 1: to be kept clean, um they were. They took up
Speaker 1: the room essentially. So these really big machines. They helped
Speaker 1: crack the Air Force Enigma, but the German naval Enigma
Speaker 1: was kind of a tougher nut to crack and also
Speaker 1: critical for winning the Battle of the Atlantic. So Turing
Speaker 1: had worked out part of the code in nineteen thirty nine,
Speaker 1: but the big break in the situation came courtesy of
Speaker 1: the Royal Navy when they captured an Enigma machine and
Speaker 1: code book from a U boat. So by June one
Speaker 1: U boat traffic was decipherable. Yeah, they had cracked the code,
Speaker 1: and by early nineteen forty two, Bletchley Park was decoding
Speaker 1: thirty nine thousand German transmissions a month, and of course
Speaker 1: some of those were complaints about the underwear splitting down
Speaker 1: the middle and that type of thing, but also some
Speaker 1: really serious communications in there. It rose to an eventual
Speaker 1: eighty four thousand transmissions a month, so pretty astonishing figure.
Speaker 1: And with the nineteen forty three breaking of Germany's high
Speaker 1: level binary teleprinter code, which was what Hitler himself used,
Speaker 1: and high members of his government um Churchill, was able
Speaker 1: to read Hitler's mail before or Hitler could read it.
Speaker 1: According to Posh's article, something I thought was interesting and
Speaker 1: something I never knew about Bletchley Park. Yeah, me neither.
Speaker 1: But it turns out the combined efforts of Bletchley Park
Speaker 1: shortened the war by two years, and for his part,
Speaker 1: Turing received the Order of the British Empire, which was
Speaker 1: one of the most prestigious awards you could get. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so after the war he's looking for a new
Speaker 1: job and he was recruited to the National Physics Laboratory,
Speaker 1: and the task, conveniently enough, was to design and build
Speaker 1: an electronic computer so essentially a real Turing machine seems
Speaker 1: like just the guy to bring in to do this.
Speaker 1: And he called his new design the Automatic Computing Engine,
Speaker 1: which has the lovely acronym ACE. But it made a
Speaker 1: good computer, uh, and it was a really ambitious advanced
Speaker 1: design it. If it had been built, it would have
Speaker 1: had the memory capacity of an early MAX. So that's
Speaker 1: pretty astounding if he consider this immediately after a World
Speaker 1: War Two. Yeah, but things moved more slowly than they
Speaker 1: had at Bletchley Park. There was lots of red tape
Speaker 1: to deal with, and Turing's colleagues thought that the original
Speaker 1: ACE design was too much and opted for a smaller machine,
Speaker 1: which was called the Pilot Model ACE. So part of
Speaker 1: the problem here was that Turing's wartime achievements were unrecognized
Speaker 1: due to their secrecy. Yeah, he couldn't go out and say, well,
Speaker 1: guys at Bletchley Park, I did this. I mean, he
Speaker 1: couldn't talk about any of that stuff. Yeah, he couldn't
Speaker 1: brag on himself. So to relieve the frustration and the
Speaker 1: stress of the situation, he started long distance running. And
Speaker 1: it took an injury actually to prevent him from qualifying
Speaker 1: for the nine Olympic Marathon team. So he was pretty
Speaker 1: good at it. It's really good at it. It's it's
Speaker 1: one of those I don't know, it's like a cherry
Speaker 1: on top for somebody with so many talents that they
Speaker 1: would also be an amazing athlete. Well, I was going
Speaker 1: to say, it's almost not fair, but you're kinder than
Speaker 1: I am, obviously. Yeah, well, whatever way you look at it.
Speaker 1: But by this point, delays meant that the National Physics
Speaker 1: Laboratory wasn't going to be the first place that built
Speaker 1: the first working electronics stored program digital computer. That honor
Speaker 1: went to Manchester University and it happened in June. So
Speaker 1: Turing obviously frustrated by his his time at the National
Speaker 1: Physics Laboratory, and they got beat out. Yeah, they got
Speaker 1: beat out. He wasn't really listened to his achievements and
Speaker 1: accomplishments weren't really appreciated to the the level they deserved
Speaker 1: to be. So he went to work in Manchester, oddly
Speaker 1: enough as the deputy director even though there was no
Speaker 1: director of the program. Kind of a strange little detail there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he designed the programming system of the Ferronti Mark one,
Speaker 1: the first commercially available digital electronic computer. So hopefully that
Speaker 1: was a little solace for him. Consolation programs. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And it was also during his time at Manchester that
Speaker 1: Turing started to hypothesize about what would later be known
Speaker 1: as artificial intelligence. And and I thought it was it
Speaker 1: was interesting, and this is something that's kind of, I guess,
Speaker 1: difficult for me to talk about with my limited knowledge
Speaker 1: of computer programming and science. I just work on a computer.
Speaker 1: I don't know what happens inside. But I was impressed
Speaker 1: that Um, even though he had he had the skill
Speaker 1: to work on developing this field, he put the machine
Speaker 1: to use right away, so I'm sure he was still
Speaker 1: considering about how it could be advanced. But he started
Speaker 1: looking for ways to use the Ferronti mark one, which
Speaker 1: I thought was was pretty neat. Yeah. It kind of
Speaker 1: went back to his old interest in the connection between
Speaker 1: mind and matter. And in nineteen fifty Touring wrote a
Speaker 1: paper called Computing, Machinery and Intelligence in the journal Mind.
Speaker 1: In it, he proposed something called an imitation test. Today
Speaker 1: that's called the Turing test, and the test basically provided
Speaker 1: a way to judge the intelligence of a machine without
Speaker 1: bio us so an interrogator, for example, would sit in
Speaker 1: an isolated room from two subjects, one a person, one
Speaker 1: a machine, and the interrogator would ask them both questions
Speaker 1: and if the interrogator couldn't tell who was who, then
Speaker 1: that meant the machine was thinking. Yeah, it had intelligence
Speaker 1: in some definable way. And Turing even predicted he had
Speaker 1: a lot of confidence in computers. He predicted that by
Speaker 1: the year two thousand, a computer would be so good
Speaker 1: at this game this, this uh Turing test, an interrogator
Speaker 1: would not have more than a seventy percent chance of
Speaker 1: correctly identifying who is who after five minutes. And that
Speaker 1: is a very ambitious goal because according to Encyclopedia Britannica,
Speaker 1: no computer today has even come close to that standard.
Speaker 1: But Turing really he did have a lot of hopes
Speaker 1: for computers. Yeah. He also hypothesized that one day, quote,
Speaker 1: ladies would take their computers for walks in the park
Speaker 1: and tell each other, my little computer said such a
Speaker 1: funny thing in the morning. I think we're a little
Speaker 1: closer to that one than the seventy goal. Maybe I
Speaker 1: don't know. I still like my doggy though. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: Turn continued to study artificial intelligence, but also stuff like
Speaker 1: biological growth with the FRONTI Mark one I said that
Speaker 1: he really did put that machine to good use, and
Speaker 1: his career was expanding into these different subject areas and
Speaker 1: his recognition was also growing. He was elected as a
Speaker 1: Fellow of the Royal Society of London in March nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty one. That's another really prestigious honor. He was appointed
Speaker 1: to Readership in the Theory of Computing at Manchester, which
Speaker 1: sounds like a very modern title. But in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: two things took a turn for the worse in his
Speaker 1: life after a break in in his Manchester home and
Speaker 1: he told the police that he thought the burglar was
Speaker 1: probably connected to a man he was quote having an
Speaker 1: affair with, and he had been pretty open about his
Speaker 1: sexuality since college. During his Letchley Park days, he had
Speaker 1: proposed to a colleague, Joan Clark, but broke it off
Speaker 1: he told her that he was gay and couldn't marry her.
Speaker 1: But being so frank with the police in this way
Speaker 1: was really dangerous because at the time homosexuality was a
Speaker 1: felony in Great Britain, and so Turing was tried and
Speaker 1: convicted of gross indecency and he was faced with a
Speaker 1: really terrible choice. Yeah, His two choices were prison or
Speaker 1: hormone injections of estrogen, so chemical sterilization. Yeah, and he
Speaker 1: chose the latter and also lost his security clearance as
Speaker 1: a result. So no government codes, no government computers. And
Speaker 1: on June seven, ninety four, he was found dead by
Speaker 1: his housekeeper with a partially eaten cyanide laced apple by
Speaker 1: his side. Now, some have theorized that he was assassinated
Speaker 1: as a security risk, but it's pretty much widely accepted
Speaker 1: nowadays that Turing committed suicide, and even then, right, and
Speaker 1: it's also accepted that Turing did kill himself in this
Speaker 1: particular way, so that it would allow his mother to
Speaker 1: interpret the situation as an accident, since he'd been working
Speaker 1: with cyanide and other chemicals in his work. Yea, so
Speaker 1: she thought that he had some cyanide on his hands
Speaker 1: and he ate an apple and accidentally poisoned himself. But uh,
Speaker 1: assuming he did commit suicide, which is what most people assume,
Speaker 1: it's a really tragic end to to this great life
Speaker 1: and and at the heels of this terrible prosecution. So
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine, Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a
Speaker 1: formal apology for the British Government's treatment of Touring, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to read just part of it. He said,
Speaker 1: Touring truly was one of those individuals we can point
Speaker 1: to whose unique contribution it helped to turn the tide
Speaker 1: of war. The dead of gratitude he's owed makes it
Speaker 1: all the more horrifying. Therefore, that he was treated so
Speaker 1: inhumanely on the behalf of the British government and all
Speaker 1: those who live freely thanks to Alan's work, I'm very
Speaker 1: proud to say we're sorry. You deserve so much better.
Speaker 1: So two thousand twelve is Alan Turing Year, and a
Speaker 1: state side recognition has been longstanding. The US Association for
Speaker 1: Computer Machinery has given out the Touring Awards since nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six, and if anything, as technology develops in new
Speaker 1: areas of steady emerge, Alan Turing will probably just become
Speaker 1: more recognized as the years go on. Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: think about how many career descriptions that apply to his name,
Speaker 1: you know, father of artificial intelligence, that sort of thing
Speaker 1: that didn't exist when he was alive. We can only
Speaker 1: imagine that more will be added over the years as
Speaker 1: science and technology advances. Thank you so much for joining
Speaker 1: us for this Saturday classic. Since this is out of
Speaker 1: the archive, if you heard an email address or a
Speaker 1: Facebook U r L or something similar are during the
Speaker 1: course of the show, that may be obsolete now, so
Speaker 1: here's our current contact information. We are at history Podcasts
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com, and then we're at
Speaker 1: missed in the History. All over social media that is
Speaker 1: our name on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram. Thanks
Speaker 1: again for listening. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.