Mycroft
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Alan Turing was a fine Mathematician and analyst of that there can be no doubt, but his lionising of late has taken on the mantle of Homosexual propaganda, Homoganda.
Much is made about how little post-war appreciation there was of this man, which is undoubtedly true.
But we are now ourselves guilty of the same lack of appreciation of those that did the same work.
William 'Bill' Tutte for example, we know as much about him as we do Turing and it has to be remembered that it was Bill Tutte that decoded the Lorentz based code that the German High Command used, the Lorentz machine was more than a billion times harder to break, we all know the Enigma device had 5 wheels and later 7 but the Lorentz had 12, and unlike the Enigma they had not 26 ring positions but 57 to 61. In terms of magnitude the Lorentz is mathematically more than 3 trillion times more complex than the 7 wheeled enigma.
Bill Tutte broke the system down, even today as a fairly accomplished mathematician myself it is a stunning piece of breaking and I (and every other mathematician across the World) think it is the pinnacle of all manual code breaking in all of History.
But he was straight, he was married with kids, he is not to be lionised.
So am I being churlish? Perhaps.
But if the issue is what happened to Turing toward the end of his life then what he did in the war is only of passing concern.
The reality was that he was seen, rightly as it happens, that he was a security risk. He was open to blackmail from the East that would have used his homosexuality to destroy our insights and security service more thoroughly than any spy in History.
We look back and are aghast at what we did, chemical neutering is drastic, but the alternative was elimination, if he was beyond persuasion to curb his desires (none of us are really) then the only alternative was neutering.
Today the 'Dark Civil Service' is rife with every form of perversion under the sun and blackmail (unless Paedophilia is the chosen bent) is impossible.
Turing did himself in before I was born, but not that long before and I grew up in an era anything other than heterosexuality was confronted with disgust.
I fear the upcoming film about Turing will be just another piece of homoganda, applying today's ideas and acceptances on the actions of the past, but the biggest concern remains the desire to lionise one person at the expense of others.
My second example of this is the inestimable Tommy Flowers, breaking a serious code is an astonishing achievement but what followed was to my estimation a greater achievement.
The first Lorentz and Enigma codes were broken by hand, it would take about 2 days for each Foolscap page of message.
Tommy Flowers took the raw breaking mechanism in formulaic form and turned that into a mechanical road-map and then into semi-electronic mode then electronic mode, that is equal to breaking the original code 3 times.
He did this for the Lorentz and the Enigma codes, in less time than both Tutte and Turing did just the original breaking.
If you can pull one name out of the hat that shortened the war, it is Tommy Flowers, his work made reading both the High Command and Field Command order an almost contemporaneous affair, and war, all war is about immediacy of information.
Much as I'd like my fellow Mathematicians to be the Halo Heroes of that endeavour, we can't claim it at all, Tommy Flowers and his team of a dozen Telephone Engineers have the halo above their heads.
This is his Wiki page:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Flowers
He is the leading contender for the title of "Our Nation's Greatest Saviour".
Note one thing, he paid for much of his development of parts for the Colossus from his own pocket and was barely covered in those costs by a 'grateful' nation at the end of the war.
Much is made about how little post-war appreciation there was of this man, which is undoubtedly true.
But we are now ourselves guilty of the same lack of appreciation of those that did the same work.
William 'Bill' Tutte for example, we know as much about him as we do Turing and it has to be remembered that it was Bill Tutte that decoded the Lorentz based code that the German High Command used, the Lorentz machine was more than a billion times harder to break, we all know the Enigma device had 5 wheels and later 7 but the Lorentz had 12, and unlike the Enigma they had not 26 ring positions but 57 to 61. In terms of magnitude the Lorentz is mathematically more than 3 trillion times more complex than the 7 wheeled enigma.
Bill Tutte broke the system down, even today as a fairly accomplished mathematician myself it is a stunning piece of breaking and I (and every other mathematician across the World) think it is the pinnacle of all manual code breaking in all of History.
But he was straight, he was married with kids, he is not to be lionised.
So am I being churlish? Perhaps.
But if the issue is what happened to Turing toward the end of his life then what he did in the war is only of passing concern.
The reality was that he was seen, rightly as it happens, that he was a security risk. He was open to blackmail from the East that would have used his homosexuality to destroy our insights and security service more thoroughly than any spy in History.
We look back and are aghast at what we did, chemical neutering is drastic, but the alternative was elimination, if he was beyond persuasion to curb his desires (none of us are really) then the only alternative was neutering.
Today the 'Dark Civil Service' is rife with every form of perversion under the sun and blackmail (unless Paedophilia is the chosen bent) is impossible.
Turing did himself in before I was born, but not that long before and I grew up in an era anything other than heterosexuality was confronted with disgust.
I fear the upcoming film about Turing will be just another piece of homoganda, applying today's ideas and acceptances on the actions of the past, but the biggest concern remains the desire to lionise one person at the expense of others.
My second example of this is the inestimable Tommy Flowers, breaking a serious code is an astonishing achievement but what followed was to my estimation a greater achievement.
The first Lorentz and Enigma codes were broken by hand, it would take about 2 days for each Foolscap page of message.
Tommy Flowers took the raw breaking mechanism in formulaic form and turned that into a mechanical road-map and then into semi-electronic mode then electronic mode, that is equal to breaking the original code 3 times.
He did this for the Lorentz and the Enigma codes, in less time than both Tutte and Turing did just the original breaking.
If you can pull one name out of the hat that shortened the war, it is Tommy Flowers, his work made reading both the High Command and Field Command order an almost contemporaneous affair, and war, all war is about immediacy of information.
Much as I'd like my fellow Mathematicians to be the Halo Heroes of that endeavour, we can't claim it at all, Tommy Flowers and his team of a dozen Telephone Engineers have the halo above their heads.
This is his Wiki page:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Flowers
He is the leading contender for the title of "Our Nation's Greatest Saviour".
Note one thing, he paid for much of his development of parts for the Colossus from his own pocket and was barely covered in those costs by a 'grateful' nation at the end of the war.
rofl):
