Queen to unveil Bletchley tribute | Hacker News Reader

Queen to unveil Bletchley tribute

bbc.co.uk

39 pointsvColin12 comments

HM The Queen's visit to Bletchley Park is wonderful.

It pays tribute to two different groups of people: those that worked at Bletchley Park during World War II and those that worked to save Bletchley Park and honour the memory of the work done there.

The story of Bletchley Park is the story of a battle of minds that supported and helped guide the physical battles of World War II. It is the story of one part of the start of the computer revolution. And it is a story of the power of diversity: the people who worked at Bletchley Park were drawn from all walks of life and brought together because of their ability.

I just visited Bletchley Park last week. It was great to see, especially the Colossus MK2 reconstruction and the working rebuild of Turing's Bombe. The only thing that made me sad was the lack of discussion of the way the government treated Turing; it was glossed over on a sign next to the Turing statue, but other than that, not a word was said.

Here's a sad little video I took on my phone of the Colossus MK2 rebuild in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziOEFIBZmBk.

This is being rectified. There is a new Turing exhibit being planned and the official apology from Gordon Brown has been delivered to Bletchley Park and the people running Bletchley Park fully understand what's needed. I have been working with them on wording for the part talking about the apology.

I have posted a link to the actual apology document that will be displayed at Bletchley Park here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2767301

That's great to hear!

Next year is the centenary of Alan Turing's birth. It would be extremely cool if they issued £100 bills with him on them for the occasion. Of course, this is not likely to ever happen.

There's a ton of stuff been and being organized for next year: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing_Year and http://www.mathcomp.leeds.ac.uk/turing2012/

There are no english £100 notes. However, Alan Turing would make an excellent candidate for any new note design, not just a one off special one. It would be nice to have him alongside darwin on the money, his ideas are arguably as profound, but much less generally appreciated. Hopefully some of the events for his centenary will go some way towards teaching people that he did a lot more than just the enigma machine.

Shame they couldn't hold off the new batch of £5 notes they're currently putting into circulation until next year.

It's not that unlikely, we have Darwin on the back of the £10 http://www.csuchico.edu/~curbanowicz/Images/DarwinTenPoundNo...

They'd probably do a special coin for 1 year though, the notes don't change very often

What I would love to see is a major (Hollywood) motion picture about WWII cryptanalysis, Enigma, etc. To my knowledge every aspect of WWII has been depicted except this (Pacific theater, Normandy, Concentration camps, Navajo codetalkers, and so on).

In fact, just finally make Cryptonomicon into a movie and I'd be happy.

A Hollywood movie about the Enigma? Like the movie "Enigma"?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0157583/

(If you take the tour at Bletchley, they will point out everything they have there that was used in the movie.)

Just checked on Wikipedia: the Queen became queen in 1952, Alan Turing died 1954. Chances are she didn't even know about him, but on the other hand she could be seen as representing the government that killed him.

Certainly the case.

The British Government is Her Majesty's Government as she is the head of state. This means that it was her government that was in power when Alan Turing died and when Gordon Brown issued the apology.

I'll be interested to see her words today when they are released, but I don't feel there's any need for Her Majesty to be directly apologize for Turing's treatment. She should be there to honour the work that was done at Bletchley Park. Her government has already issued the apology necessary.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com