Alan Turing's notes found being used as roof insulation at Bletchley Park

http://www.mkweb.co.uk/pictures/8203-BLETCHLEY-PARK-Alan-Turing-s-notes-used-roof/pictures-25966005-detail/pictures.html

by antimora • 11 years ago

393 87 11 years ago

mkweb.co.uk

dang5• 11 years ago

This site (edit: I mean the site of the current URL) seems to have stolen the content and contains no attribution. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/turing-papers-tha... has the story, so we changed to that, but its paywall seems worse than what HN will tolerate, so we put it back. This is unsatisfactory.

Can anyone suggest a better URL?

Edit: Sorry, it seems I got this wrong and the original post was just fine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8993631. (That might mean it was other sites ripping off MKWeb and not the other way around. So I'm glad we didn't change the URL after all.)

adamseabrook• 11 years ago

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/turing-papers-tha...

antimora2• 11 years ago

When I click on this link, I am presented with a "sign-up" page.

""" YOU'VE REACHED A SUBSCRIBER-ONLY ARTICLE. Would you like to become a subscriber for 50% less for the first 12 weeks?* Sign up now and access the full breadth of The Australian's content in minutes. """

SomeCallMeTim• 11 years ago

I get the paywall for that as well.

itcmcgrath• 11 years ago

Protip: Paste URL into Google Search, click result.

No paywall.

Same works with a lot of news sites that don't show paywalls on search traffic, but do on other referrals.

lstamour• 11 years ago

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article4340369.ece ... has a few paragraphs with a link for "more photos". Sadly, also paywall protected.

radicalbyte• 11 years ago

They're sister papers, i.e. News Corp / Murdoch / Fox News.

rodgerd2• 11 years ago

http://www.mkweb.co.uk/pictures/8203-BLETCHLEY-PARK-Alan-Tur...

dang5• 11 years ago

That's the current URL, which appears to have copied the content without attribution.

lambda• 11 years ago

When you say "this site", please include the actual site that you are referring to (edit: like "mkweb.co.uk", rather than "this site" or "the site of the current URL"). It is hard for others to tell if a comment like this is actually referring to the current article, or it has subsequently been changed. Edit: this applies to people other than mods here too. In general, if discussing the title or some aspect of whether the correct source was used for the news story in question, please quote the title or include the name of the site you are referring to, as otherwise a subsequent change by the moderators can make your comment nonsensical.

As a note: I really wish that HN would include a history of title and/or link changes for an article, so that when you go to a thread an people are complaining about some problem with one of them (or are reading the article with an interpretation based on the old title), it becomes easier to tell what they were referring to by checking against the history. As it is, in a large number of the cases in which a title or link is changed, a large portion of the discussion no longer makes sense as it was referring to the old title and/or link.

mod• 11 years ago

Agreed. Later, if dang gets his better url, his comment might read "17 hours ago" "the site of the current url" and we'll be thinking some proper source ripped off the content.

All of the solutions are sub-optimal, but preserving a history would be nice, at least.

blahedo• 11 years ago

Would this do? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2934358/How-chilly-s...

j2kun• 11 years ago

These notes don't particularly seem very important. On the other hand, I always thought it would be interesting to have an art piece that is like "famous mathematicians notes at the moment when the inspiration struck."

rodgerd2• 11 years ago

"The documents also included the only known examples of Banbury sheets, a technique devised by the mathematician Alan Turing to accelerate the process of decrypting Nazi messages. No other examples have ever been found."

Was the third paragraph too hard to reach?

dang5• 11 years ago

Was the third paragraph too hard to reach?

This comment would be much better without that acerbic swipe. Please stay substantive.

pbhjpbhj6• 11 years ago

The structure and use of Banbury Sheets appears to have been well known prior to this discovery? TBH I'd say a specific piece of paper someone drew or wrote on isn't important if we know the content of that paper already; but I know many would disagree.

Animats• 11 years ago

The restoration effort at Bletchley Park has gone over the top. I visited the place on a weekday in 2002, when almost nobody went there unless they were really into crypto history. It was run down, and there were only about 10 people visiting that day. The tour guide was more into the architecture of the mansion than the crypto, although they had a bombe model (a prop made for a 2001 movie) and had started on the Colossus rebuild. The only thing that worked back then was one Enigma machine. A non-working Lorenz machine and some other gear was in glass cases. The guide pointed out where various of the huts had been. It was just one of those obscure, slightly run down historical spots one visits in England, with the usual lake and swans.

Then they got National Lottery funding. Now they've rebuild most of the huts in brick, re-landscaped the grounds, have elaborate displays, added the "National Museum of Computing", renamed it "Historic Bletchley Park", put in a visitor's center, a children's playground, a cafe, and, of course, a gift shop. There's "Turing Gate" "Colossus Way", "Enigma Place", two memorials, and more stuff under construction.

All this is on the Bletchley Park side. The Colossus rebuild is at the National Museum of Computing, which is on the same property but has separate staff and funding. (http://www.tnmoc.org/) They don't get along with the Bletchley Park tourist operation and don't have public funding. ("Other exhibitions are available at Bletchley Park, but operated independently of the Bletchley Park Trust.", says the Trust site.)

rst2• 11 years ago

Not sure whether "over the top" was meant as a complaint; I visited last summer, and thought the (obviously expensive) displays were pretty effective. The main grounds of the museum (the "tourist operation") also now has a bunch of interesting working replica gear, including a Bombe and some of its less publicized support equipment.

The computing museum is also interesting; BTW, in addition to the Colossus rebuild, they're also constructing a working EDSAC replica (using metallic delay lines instead of mercury tanks for memory, but otherwise as exact as possible), and have a bunch of other interesting old machines in the collection. For visit planning, though, it's open fewer days than the Trust-managed property.

TazeTSchnitzel• 11 years ago

Presumably the reason for not using mercury is safety?

Are metallic delay lines sufficiently similar to mercury tanks that it's not an architectural issue to switch them?

anom99992• 11 years ago

I know this is possibly the saddest thing anyone has ever said, but the computing museum is one of my favourite places on earth.

It's a joyful place with so much old technology yet a refreshingly hands on attitude. I don't think there was a single exhibit that wasn't interactive by one method or another - which really matters when you're talking about technology that is largely at an age where kids are too young to have grown up with so it gives them a chance to play with the predecessors to their much loved consumer hardware - and it gives us adults a chance to do more than just reminisce about the fun days experimenting with emerging technologies.

I'd highly recommend that museum on it's own merit; let alone spending the day exploring the site and Bletchly Park as well.

twelvechairs• 11 years ago

I went just before the lottery funding (2009 i think?). The national museum of computing was reasonably new - obviously the intended purpose was to attract more people and stop it falling down. The split was successful in this way. I appreciated both sides - bletchley park was a lot more history (with volunteers who could tell you more about it than you needed) and the NMC had old consoles set up playing games, amongst the rebuilt WWII stuff. Best museum ive (group) i b e been to anywhere. Im happy they are getting more funding though of course the quality will gradually decrease.

themodelplumber• 11 years ago

Really neat to hear it's being restored; a bit saddened that it's being done through a regressive tax though. Ideally the problems with that model will be recognized and workable alternative funding sources can come into effect.

stretchwithme• 11 years ago

The lottery is now voluntary.

JacobAldridge• 11 years ago

We visited in early January 2012 - was a spontaneous decision, and one we're grateful we did (especially having now watched The Imitation Game, which was even more enjoyable for having been there and heard the history).

Colossus was running by that point (we made a separate donation), but most of the extras you've mentioned are clearly new. Certainly glad to know it's not going to crumble into obscurity anytime soon.

drzaiusapelord• 11 years ago

put in a visitor's center, a children's playground, a cafe, and, of course, a gift shop.

That's pretty standard. Most of those are profit centers as well. That 10 dollar turkey sandwich has a massive markup. Frankly, its weird to go to a tourist venue that doesn't have some level of merchandising. I don't see Bletchley as some holy ground where these kinds of things defile it. Perhaps people need to have more realistic ideas of what a tourist destination means.

logicallee2• 11 years ago

There is something really interesting about this title (phrasing or how it reads) but I can't put my finger on it.

Anyone?

andrewchoi• 11 years ago

Maybe it's that you want to stop after "found"? Leave it as: Alan Turing's notes found.

logicallee2• 11 years ago

Yes, that's it you've found it. It's an interesting effect: "Alan Turing's notes found...being used as roof insulation at Bletchley Park". It's a very unexpected continuation of the sentence. (If you know the end you'd expect it to be written "Alan Turing's notes being used in roof insulation at Bletchley park" if that's the main point.) Thanks.

clapas• 11 years ago

This man was literally inventing modern computing and cryptography. Those papers must be very valuable for collectionists. This reminds me that I got to know recently about the famous Turing test being passed. Amazing. What a vision.

IshKebab• 11 years ago

The Turing test hasn't been passed yet. Don't let those chatbot publicity stunts fool you.

jackweirdy• 11 years ago

Not to mention it’s not really a “test” so much as a thought experiment. It’s far too loosely designed to be a real test.

lotsofmangos2• 11 years ago

also, as I understand it, the original game is a computer convincing an observer that it is a woman as well as a man can, or a man as well as a woman can

in that version the human and the computer are then involved in a more similar task, which to me makes it far more experimentally interesting than most of the modern attempts on the idea

DanBC• 11 years ago

They've only just (the past few years) declassified some of his papers from GCHQ so it's nice that we get to see these without much of a wait.

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17771962

jameshart• 11 years ago

My first thought was: some old guy or girl who worked at Bletchley in the war is probably about to get a knock on their door and a questioning under the official secrets act for their failure to properly dispose of classified documents, because they had the bright idea of using some of the loose papers they were supposed to take to the incinerator to make their hut a little more cosy during the winter of '44...

toddsiegel• 11 years ago

Back in the old days anything they could stuff in a wall was insulation. I was a volunteer firefighter years back. We had a call in the old part of town, with buildings dating back to the 1700s (George Washington slept here!). We had to open up the walls in a few spots and really cool old bottles, papers, and other stuff came out.

meric• 11 years ago

I wonder if Alan Turing installed that insulation himself.

huxley• 11 years ago

Seaweed was a pretty common insulator in old houses in fishing communities along the eastern seaboard of Canada and the US.

msutherl• 11 years ago

I used to work in the largest brick building in Canada. In parts of the building that were under renovation, the walls were open and hundred year-old seaweed and/or newspapers were falling out. Pretty cool.

DonHopkins• 11 years ago

I was re-plastering the walls of my house in Berkeley, and I found a bottle of "Shinola"! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinola Now I can say that I know shit from Shinola. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/know_shit_from_Shinola

jeffwass2• 11 years ago

When we redid the bathroom in my 100 year old Baltimore house, we found some pretty rad stuff.

Old crumpled newspapers from the time of construction were shoved in the walls. These were interior walls, I think to assist with holding the plaster in the laths. I was able to salvage part of one page with a comic strip. You wouldn't have even thought the comic was much out-of-date either.

<even more off-topic> So at some point one of the prior owners decided to 'modernize' the bathroom and turn the original clawfoot tub into a modern recessed bath. They did this by buding a brick surround around it, covered with tiles. Weighed a TON. But underneath when we demished the surround, we saw planks of wood lying next to the tub. Turns out they weren't wood but dusty marble trim that originally surrounded the walls along the floor. Original charm from the original house! We had no idea the tub was even a clawfoot, much less there was marble trim.

RyanMcGreal• 11 years ago

I was able to salvage part of one page with a comic strip.

Is it posted somewhere?

throwaway8899• 11 years ago

Something to think about ...

Alan Turing wasn't a national security risk because he was gay, but he actually was a risk because he was that good.

Anybody who could break rotor ciphers circa WW2 was very valuable indeed.

pbhjpbhj6• 11 years ago

Alan Turing wasn't a national security risk because he was gay //

I always though he was bi, explaining the near marriage - supposedly it wasn't until late on in their courtship that he informed his fiancée that he had a predilection for men and she was supposedly shocked.

That aside I'd imagine anyone in their 40s privy to Top Secret info who picked up unknown teenagers for short-term sexual encounters would be a national security risk. Want access to his papers and pillow-talk - send in strapping teen to chat him up? [this is basically what happened (apparently barring the national security elements, but I always wondered) when he was robbed that led to reports of this particular homosexual tryst to the police].

Anybody who could break rotor ciphers circa WW2 was very valuable indeed.

Indeed, http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/virtualbp/poles/poles.htm

Turing did fantastic and utterly amazing work, both in crypto and comp sci of course.

ketralnis• 11 years ago

Try it this way:

That aside I'd imagine anyone in their 40s privy to Top Secret info who picked up women in bars for short-term sexual encounters would be a national security risk. Want access to his papers and pillow-talk - send in an attractive lady to chat him up?

Is that different? Or do you think that straight men are somehow immune?

PhasmaFelis2• 11 years ago

The blackmail argument was always depressingly circular anyway. "We have to fire you if you're gay, because somebody could blackmail you by threatening to get you fired for being gay."

PhasmaFelis2• 11 years ago

The blackmail argument was always depressingly circular anyway. "We have to fire you if you're gay, because somebody could blackmail you by threatening to get you fired for being gay."

ekanes• 11 years ago

If anyone's interested in Bletchley Park, or the intersection between encryption and WWII, Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson is a fantastic book.

reality_czech• 11 years ago

I thought Mr. Turing worked on the foundations of computer science, not on the roof.

Vecrios• 11 years ago

That's quite a Turn in ones career.

Alan Turing's notes found being used as roof insulation at Bletchley Park

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