Today, many see him as the “father of the computer.” In 1936, British mathematician Alan Turing devised a number of important concepts that formed the basis for the computer revolution. But the brilliant Turing also struggled with his homosexuality at a time when it was all but accepted. “Into the cell or chemical castration, what would you have done?”
Computers are everywhere. Almost everyone has to deal with it on a daily basis and nobody is surprised by the apparent simplicity with which the devices (usually) do what we want.
Yet 100 years ago, at a time when not even every house had electricity, such a thing was almost unimaginable. The British mathematician Alan Turing, who would later describe the first fundamental sketches for a computer on paper, had already been born. Nowadays he is often seen as the 'father of the computer'.
Despite Turing's turbulent life and its disastrous end, he is not afraid to give an interview to Kennislink 59 years after his illustrious death.
Mr. Turing, it all started so beautifully. You were a real go-getter.
“You can say that. For example, I can still remember that on my 14 e to Sherborne School for the first time went, a private high school nearly 100 miles from where I lived. Unfortunately, that first day of school coincided exactly with a national transport strike. I spoke on the bike and rode all the way myself. It was so far that I had to spend the night on the way, but I got there.”
“Well, it was actually a relatively carefree time for me. Although my parents and supervisors wanted me to be classically trained, I could spend days studying the most difficult math problems; or Albert Einstein's theories of relativity, for example.”
So everything went smoothly?
“Initially yes. I had a wonderful friend, Christopher Morcom. He was in my class and shared with me a passion for science and mathematics in particular. During the lessons we often wrote notes to each other with difficult riddles.”
“Unfortunately, that came to an end. Christopher died suddenly of tuberculosis, a disease he had probably contracted years earlier from drinking contaminated milk. His death touched me deeply. What almost no one knew then is that he was my first love.”
How terrible, his death must have scarred you for life.
“Of course, I was absolutely devastated. But it has also steered my interests in a certain direction. I became very interested in consciousness. How could it be that someone who was there the day before suddenly disappeared? What had happened to consciousness? What is consciousness?”
“I started reading all possible scientific works about the brain. Biology, philosophy, mathematical logic and quantum mechanics, I had to know all about it. It took up all my time.”
“In the end it was clear to me that the human brain is nothing more than an - intelligent indeed - machine whose operation had to be described with mathematical logic. The only question was, what is that logic?”
So that terrible event led, as it were, to your most important work, the description of a Turing machine?
“Well, Turing machine. Of course I never called it that myself. But indeed, if you look at it that way, Christopher has given the impetus to it.”
“The idea for a universal computing machine came to mind one day, while running. The idea involves a machine that is able to write a piece of information (for example, a 1 or a 0) on a long ribbon. He is also able to read back information that he has previously written down. With a few very simple rules you can, for example, do additions with such a device. If this fictional machine then only has enough memory and sufficient speed, you can do more complex calculations with it.”
A Turing machine made in Lego.
“Of course I couldn't build this machine in 1936, the technology simply wasn't there before that. But the power of the idea lay elsewhere. It showed that you really had to be able to build a machine that did complicated calculations using a few simple calculation steps. We suddenly had a mathematical tool to determine which calculations you could solve with a computer. And that at a time when there weren't even computers…”
But then the Second World War came and you actually took a different tack, you became a codebreaker.
“That's right, I was recruited by the Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park in the south of England. They wanted me to crack the German Enigma codes. It was vital for the Allies to know what the Nazis were communicating with, for example, their U-boats in the Atlantic.”
“I preferred to work alone and sometimes locked myself up for days. In the end we managed to improve the Polish Bomba machine, with which the Poles were already well advanced in cracking the German codes. Around 1942-43 it became increasingly possible to intercept the secret messages. I was later assured that this changed the course of the war and saved hundreds of thousands of lives.”
“Actually, those experiences from the war were also useful for my later work. I had come into contact a lot with electronic systems that helped to crack the codes. I was then able to use this knowledge in the development of one of the first real computers.”
In 1950, the ACE computer you co-developed was the fastest in the world, with a memory of roughly 25 kilobytes. Did you know that an average computer nowadays easily has a memory of 100 million times.
Turing chokes on his tea:“What gigantic progress! When I was developing ACE, I insisted on the need for large, fast-access memory, but I never expected this. I can hardly imagine why you would need so much memory…”
“Excuse me, you use home a computer? Where do you play music, edit photos and play videos? Well, I can tell you that this was not the case in my day. The laboratory was the only domain of the computer. The handful of computers that existed worldwide at the time were mainly used for scientific calculations, or by the military for processing radar images.”
“You've taken me by surprise, I need to let this all sink in. Oh well, if I were to ask you such a question in 2070, I'm sure you would choke too!”
Did you know that nowadays you are sometimes counted among the 100 most important scientists of the 20 e century?
“Ah, is that so? Yes, my time has offered me many opportunities, given the advent of the first computers and the outbreak of war. There were even people who saw me as a true war hero.”
“But that recognition was of little use to me in 1952, when I was convicted of homosexuality. As a 'criminal' I was no longer allowed to work for the government. I was seen as a danger to national security! To make matters worse, I was put on the spot:either I had to go to jail or I had to be chemically castrated. What would you have chosen? It was horrible. Perhaps I could have lived better in your time in that regard.”
Did that ultimately have something to do with your death?
“Do you know what happens if you are treated with estrogen as a man? You develop feminine characteristics. I got breasts… My life had become unlivable in so many ways. I had thought about suicide several times in the years before my death. What difference does it make how I ingested the cyanide?”
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Out and about with Turing or Tesla
What would it be like to spend the day talking to famous inventors like Nikola Tesla or Alan Turing? That's what we tried to imagine at Kennislink. We pretended we could, a series of fictitious interviews. In these conversations we tried not only to learn everything about inventions, but also to penetrate into their private lives. In this slideshow you will meet eight famous inventors.
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The self-made woman
The woman in our list of famous inventors initially developed her device to lend a helping hand. But especially hotels and medical institutions saw the usefulness of the fast and boiling hot washing machine. Kennislink spoke to Ms Cochrane about her difficult road to success and the inspiration for her invention.
Read the interview with Josephine Cochrane here
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The thoughtful
Alexander Graham Bell was born with the fascination for sound. His father and grandfather were speech teachers who taught the deaf to speak, and Bell was involved in this throughout his life. In his spare time, this workaholic worked on several inventions. Kennislink talked to him about his most important invention:the telephone. A phone interview, of course. “People remember me because of the telephone, but my real mission may have been to teach the deaf to speak.”
Read the interview with Alexander Graham Bell here
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The outcast
Today, many see him as the “father of the computer.” In 1936, British mathematician Alan Turing devised a number of important concepts that formed the basis for the computer revolution. But the brilliant Turing also struggled with his homosexuality at a time when it was all but accepted. “Into the cell or chemical castration, what would you have done?”
Read the interview with Alan Turing here
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The loner
The stubborn go-getter Theodore Maiman manufactured the first laser in 1960 thanks to a special combination of knowledge, skill and character. He was a real inventor, who was not taken quite seriously by the scientific establishment. And the press didn't like his 'death ray' at first either. Maiman blows off steam in this fictional interview. “I don't get discouraged easily.”
Read the interview with Theodore Maiman
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The troublemaker
A genius, genius inventor, provocateur and a racist. Few inventors of the twentieth century are as controversial as the American physicist William Shockley. Partly thanks to his work, the transistor was created, which laid the foundation for today's computers. “I've loved provoking all my life.”
Read the interview with William Shockley
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The entrepreneur
Sometime between 1440 and 1450, the German Johannes Gutenberg first put individual metal letters together in order to be able to print texts faster than ever. The technology soon caused a true revolution. But Gutenberg's life had a lot of setbacks. “Perhaps I am more of a creative entrepreneur looking for opportunities than a real inventor.”
Read the interview with Johannes Gutenberg
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The modest
He is the discoverer of penicillin, a bactericidal substance that could suddenly cure all kinds of infectious diseases. But he himself never understood that such a fuss was made about it. Kennislink held a fictional interview with the modest Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming. "A contamination in my experiment eventually earned me the Nobel Prize."
Read the interview with Alexander Fleming here
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The Eccentric
Nikola Tesla is a born inventor, he is adept at it from an early age. Later on, the originally Serb will provide important amounts for our current electricity grid. But he also works on radio communication and wireless energy transfer. Tesla is often portrayed as an almost mythical figure, a legend. Kennislink finds out what he really was like. “I loved just working on my inventions, all by myself.”
Read the interview with Nikola Tesla
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Other fictional interviews
Handsome minds over a cup of coffeeBrilliant biologists over a drink
This article is part of the 'Fraud Inventors Spoken' series, in which eight famous inventors are 'fictionally interviewed'.