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Alan Turing's Notes Found After Being Used As Insulation At Bletchley Park
An anonymous reader writes: In 2013, a restoration project for Hut 6 of Bletchley Park uncovered a collection of papers being used as roof insulation. The papers were frozen to preserve them while they were inspected and repaired. Now they're on display at an exhibition showing items found during the restoration process. "The documents also included the only known examples of Banbury sheets, a technique devised by [Turing] to accelerate the process of decrypting Nazi messages. No other examples have ever been found. All the findings are unique as all documentary evidence from the codebreaking process was supposed to be destroyed under wartime security rules."
His actions saved the documents from certain destruction. Punch something else.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Other than the obvious impact Turing's work had in the war effort, did people at Bletchley have any idea how valuable his work would be more generally? My computer science peers are quite good at explaining how their work might have value and impact. Indeed, a lot of scientists these days start publications by providing this context. But is the same true in the first half of the twentieth century and in the middle of a world war? It might well have been the case that his notes were genuinely believed to have more value as insulation.
Pretty much any country in the world would have treated Turing the same in that era. Most of the world still would. The Brits have no special shame in that category, and they have been doing their level best to set things right. Many other countries still have yet to catch up, not just legally, but culturally.
Yet he did more to save their asses than ALL of the RAF.
I hope all you brits are still ashamed of yourselves.
As opposed to forcibly enslaving millions of people around the world through several centuries of colonial rule? If you're going to lay a guilt trip on Britain, what about the US with it's legacy of slavery? And good heavens, look at the evils perpetrated in communist Russia, or Germany and Japan during the war years. Look, every country has their black marks, and some are pretty damn black indeed. If you're going to collectively assign guilt to future generations, it will never end. Ever. Future generations will also look at us and sadly shake their heads, I'm sure. We learn from the past, we forgive, we try to make things right as best we can, and we move on.
The British government has offered an official apology for their treatment of him and pardoned him, and I'm not sure how much more he can be honored and appreciated he can be at this point, not just by the Brits, but by everyone who knows how much he accomplished. See my sig.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.