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Comment by rtpg | Hacker News Reader

After watching the Imitation Game, I did some googling/trying to find out how the Bombe worked. I expected it to not be very exact, but I also kinda felt like the entire narrative around that history in the industry was just super off!

- The core mechanisms of the machine for running the Enigma "quickly" was from the Polish - The machine wasn't even a generalized computer!

I just felt really misled! Perhaps the biggest thing is Turing probably ended up doing good amounts of contributions to the academic/theoretical side and the practical side, but it feels like we are missing opportunities to describe the confluence of so many people's ideas in this period of history to end up at the current "machines that read instructions and then act upon them in a generalized fashion, very quickly".

This article seems to be that, and it's super intersting

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I knew some of the real history beforehand and the movie really annoyed me, so I’m glad to hear you were able to uncover the facts yourself and had a similar reaction!

Among so much that’s just plain wrong, I really dislike the insidious idea that Turing’s horrible punishment at the hands of the state was wrong because he was a unique genius and war hero. No, it was wrong because he was a human being and being gay should not be a crime!

That line of thought makes it harder to argue that no, Turing may have been a genius but wasn’t unique, he was just a significant player in a rich field. That doesn’t make him any less interesting.

> I really dislike the insidious idea that Turing’s horrible punishment at the hands of the state was wrong because he was a unique genius and war hero. No, it was wrong because he was a human being and being gay should not be a crime!

100% agree, an unfortunate mentality all too present in society, where we tend to build narratives of feeling bad for people because are exceptional, and not because they are people

See the classic kids story of “oh the store tried to kick the hobo out but actually he was a millionaire!!!” How about treating all people like human beings even if they aren’t like… valuable to you

I think the attraction to the Turing story is that it is a classical tragedy. If what happened to him happened to any gay man, it would be wrong. But since it happened to one of the greatest geniuses of the 20th century, who may have had other breakthroughs that could have pushed mankind forward, it is a tragedy. A tragedy for all mankind. Mankind suffered a huge loss due to its own moral failures.

The Imitation Game was inaccurate and horrible every way you look at it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imitation_Game#Historical_...

What I find so strange about The Imitation Game that all of this is pretty well-known; anyone who has skimmed the Wikipedia article of Turing and the overview article on breaking Enigma knows that the movie is pretty much complete horseshit. Most of the alterations in the movie removed things that would have made the movie more interesting instead of the utterly bland story they made up.

Given the movie was a major box office hit and critically acclaimed, I suspect the producers knew what they were doing.

Just don't expect historical accuracy from a Hollywood movie. Cleopatra didn't look like Elizabeth Taylor either.

Cleopatra most likely looked like a horribly inbred Greek, seeing as her family tree has a literal circle in it.

I'm struggling to think of any movies that are really historically accurate - the point is to tell a good story to get people to watch it to make a profit.

Edit: I'm Scottish so Braveheart is the obvious example - entertaining movie but wildly inaccurate and even manages to get who/what the term "braveheart" refers to wrong.

Master and Commander (the Russell Crowe film)? While it's a fictional story, I've heard it said that it captures the period extremely well.

Gettysburg and its prequel (Gods and Generals). The dialogue and character motivations may or may not be accurate, but the battles it depicts are pretty accurate.

When I visited Bletchley Park a few years ago, I got into a conversation with one of the docents about the film and it was clear that they had a very low opinion of it there. Turing deserved a better film.

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