The Father of Digital Technology
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| Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing in the Imitation Game |
Ericsson, Motorola, HTC, etc, etc…)
If one were to take a survey by
stopping 100 people at random in any, and for that matter all of the world’
major cities and ask the following question:
“who do you think is the real inventor behind the
technology of the computer and digital phone?”
My bet will be less that 1 or 2
percent will answer: Alan Mathison Turing.
Yes I have no doubt that it is the very little known genius Alan
Mathison Turing. Why very little known? In
a nutshell Turning was ostracized because he was gay at a time when
homosexuality was a crime in the UK in 1952. Instead of serving prison sentence Turing
accepted the alternative option of treatment with female hormones, alternative
better known at the time as chemical castration. Thanks to the humiliation of
this genius Turing committed suicide by cyanide poisoning before his 42nd
birthday in 1954. It took the British Government,
current Prime Minister Cameron, close to 60 years to pass a motion annulling
Turn 1952 homosexual conviction in late 2013.
I wonder how Turning bones, spirit and soul reacted to this news!
Am sure that when one looks at
Turing’s academic accolades and World War II contribution to Britain war effort
little, if any doubt, be left in crowning Turing as the father and patriarch of
modern day ‘miracles’ of digital technology that permanently changed mankind’ understanding and quality of
life to a scope and destiny yet to be determined. Before embarking on specific explanation of
Turing’s inventions I want to briefly raise the question of copyright. Can one imagine if Turing were to copyright
his inventions and his estate claimed royalties from the likes of current
Apple, Samsung, and their predecessors
in the digital technology industry.
There is no doubt that the entity and the beneficiaries of that entity
would have been materially the richest known to the current civilization of
mankind.
Academic accolades of Alan Mathison Turing
If one were to search for a
hereditary root of Turing’ mathematic genius the figure that stands out is his
grandfather from his mother side being chief engineer of the Madrass
Railway. His grandfather from his father’s
side was a clergyman. At the age of 13
he was a student at Sherborne School Manchester better known for humanities
than mathematics. In a letter to his parents a teacher wrote: ‘I hope he will not fall between two
stools. If he is to be scientific
specialist he is wasting his time…’
After Sherborne Turing After
Sherborne, Turing studied as an undergraduate from 1931 to 1934 at King’s College Cambridge from where he
gained first-class honours in mathematics. In 1935, at the young age of 22, he
was elected a fellow at King's on the strength of a dissertation in which he
proved the central limit theorem. From King’s College he went to Princeton University
I will stop at this stage and leave the more interesting and better known
work and contributions of Turing that took place at on 4 September 1939, the
day after the Britain declared war on Germany
on which date Turing reported to Bletchley
Park , the wartime station better known as Government Code &
Cypher School
King’s College
Cambridge where the computer room is named after Turing, who became a student
there in 1931 and a Fellow in 1935
A complete and
working replica of a bombe at the
National Codes Centre at Bletchley
Park Britain
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