Via Instapundit: After not seeing the light of day for at least 30 years, a unique collection of letters by famous mathematician Alan Turing has been found in a storage space at his old university.
Wrapped in a plain paper folder and tucked at the back of an old filing cabinet, the 148 never-before seen documents include a letter from the UK's intelligence services, and another letter in which Turing remarks "I detest America."
Alan Turing was one of the pioneers of modern computer science, and a machine he built during the World War II enabled the decryption of Germany's Enigma code, eventually shortening the war.
In 1949 he became deputy director of the computing lab at the University of Manchester, and earlier this year the university staff accidentally stumbled upon a whole heap of Turing's correspondence while cleaning out a storage room.
"When I first found it I initially thought, 'that can't be what I think it is', but a quick inspection showed it was," says computer engineer Jim Miles from the university's School of Computer Science.
"I was astonished such a thing had remained hidden out of sight for so long. No one who now works in the School or at the university knew they even existed."
The university's archivists immediately set to work to sort through these documents, cataloguing and storing them for posterity, and have now published the entire archive online for readers to peruse.
Wrapped in a plain paper folder and tucked at the back of an old filing cabinet, the 148 never-before seen documents include a letter from the UK's intelligence services, and another letter in which Turing remarks "I detest America."
Alan Turing was one of the pioneers of modern computer science, and a machine he built during the World War II enabled the decryption of Germany's Enigma code, eventually shortening the war.
In 1949 he became deputy director of the computing lab at the University of Manchester, and earlier this year the university staff accidentally stumbled upon a whole heap of Turing's correspondence while cleaning out a storage room.
"When I first found it I initially thought, 'that can't be what I think it is', but a quick inspection showed it was," says computer engineer Jim Miles from the university's School of Computer Science.
"I was astonished such a thing had remained hidden out of sight for so long. No one who now works in the School or at the university knew they even existed."
The university's archivists immediately set to work to sort through these documents, cataloguing and storing them for posterity, and have now published the entire archive online for readers to peruse.
(Link)
8 comments:
That you read this is testament to Turing's genius.
Every programmer knows who he is.
Sounds like he didn't care for us gauche, vulgar Yanks. Takes all kinds.
We all hate someone. Me...French Canadians.
That's okay. Sentiment returned.
Know who else despised America. Sayyid Qutb, that's who. He was very smart too, and his ideas also left lasting impressions with tremendous cultural consequences.
He denounced our primitive jazz music and loud clothing and our obsession with body image and perfection, our bald sexuality, our temptress females acting their part in a sexual system that is positively biological.
How perceptive!
You see, there are so many things Americans take for granted like green lawns that show that ours is a culture of greed. This as viewed from conservative Greeley Colorado. A town started by utopian idealists who settled there to make the "desert bloom" by irrigation and where alcohol was illegal.
Turin would agree.
And smart as Turin was the moment he opened his mouth, the very moment, no matter how brilliant the substance that comes out of it, he still sounded like a perfect retard speaking baby-talk, omitting his R's where required for comprehension and sticking them randomly elsewhere in mathematic compensation confounding communication even further, and as if that isn't enough making grunting sounds that aren't even phonemes in any form of English in substitution for essential consonants, as if to purposefully or stupidly disguise meaning, and then emphasizing all these distortions of one's own language with vocal stress, the result being perfectly obnoxiously ridiculous nonsense that greatly damages communication hopelessly spewed from the mouths of adults, while charming from the babbling mouths of infants just learning to speak.
America, where the men are more masculine than Turin and the women more feminine than Turin. Of course Turin despises America. We actually drive our automobiles over here, and firearms are actually legal. And Turin knew the reason the right to bear firearms is written into our constitutionally protected rights is precisely because Britain came over here in their boats with the expressed purpose of kicking our asses. TWICE! No British arrogant ass kicking impulse, then no 2nd amendment. Britain, it's all your own g.d. fault. So Turin can just suck my big honking American penal colony. But he could not. Because I wasn't even f'k'n born yet. Another reason for Turin to despise America.
So Alan Turin despising America doesn't bother me one bit. A smatter a fact, I like it.
And believe me. London is the last place on Earth I'd care to see.
London does not impress me, but Salisbury does (and not for the steaks). They have the Cathedral and a copy of the Magna Carta.
Turing was a brilliant but disturbed man with a lots of issues.
I enjoyed London, and over the past few days have talked with several people in England and Scotland. They are deeply concerned about the events here is SE Texas. Turing was eccentric to say the least. I'm sure he detested many things, and it was mutual with others. In a war, you put up with shit like his, because you need every resource. And he was a brilliant mathematician.
The telling part is whoever found the documents and thought of all the things in them; the part where Turing wrote this, without any other context provided to us, was the important headline. That person is the POS that go f'themselves. After this week, I have very little patience with those whose with this deep level of hate. It has always been bad, but with the additional contrast I'm seeing, it really is intolerable.
Hello Leland- Ditto!
I too thought what a dick move for the headline writer to pull out one random comment from this amazing discovery. I'm not smart enough myself to appreciate what insights the study of a real genius' notes would reveal, but I am just smart enough to know when a jerk is being a jerk.
Early Virtue Signaling.
Letting the funding fathers know he's on their side.
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