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Alan Turing to be the face of new £50 note
- esotericn 7y agoThis is almost two months old and was posted at the time.
- jacquesm 7y agoYes, but this is the first time it makes the front page. Better late than never.
- cornstalks 7y agoIt was definitely on the front page last time (664 points, 298 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20439425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20439425
- jacquesm 7y agoAh cool, missed that completely. I thought this was the source that would be posted but of course the same story can be posted from different sources. (It was posted from this one as well, three times and none of those made it).
- DoreenMichele 7y agoThank you. The top comment elegantly makes the point that: It would have been better for Turing if the government left him alone instead of chemically castrating him and driving him to suicide, then venerating him. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20441603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20441603 The fight for LGBTQ rights is far from over. As a reminder, LGBTQ individuals are at greater-than-average risk of homelessness. https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2019/06/lgbtq-individuals-are-at-increased-risk.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2019/06/lgbtq-indiv...
- jayflux 7y agoIt’s been on the front page twice already, from 2 different news sources
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y agoFolks who didn't see it last time will have the opportunity to appreciate it this time.
- johnchristopher 7y agoThese announcements always make me ponder about the people we'll put on bank notes or erect statues in honour of in 50 years and are alive and persecuted today but not recognized by society.
- elevenoh 7y agoRoss Ulbricht 50 yrs from faceOnBankNotes?
- pricees 7y agoJohn McAfee on the US $1,000,000 bill?
- jacquesm 7y agoI don't think either of those deserve to be mentioned in the same way as Alan Turing, and no amount of time passing will change that. Note that Alan Turing was persecuted for what he was, not for what he did. I also don't think there will be an ACM award named for either.
- Throw_Away_5382 7y ago> Note that Alan Turing was persecuted for what he was, not for what he did. No, he was prosecuted for having sex with other men. That is something he did. Being homosexual was never illegal.
- michaelmrose 7y agoThe law against homosexual sex does nothing to increase the welfare of their fellow man and prevents individuals from finding fulfilling love. It was an evil law and people should be proud for defying it not ashamed because their love was stronger than your hate.
- jacquesm 7y agoWhat a crap comment, I can see why you chose to use a throwaway account. That's about the same as saying that a law against breathing would make all of us illegals because it is something that we did, rather than that breathing is a direct result of being alive as a mammal. Sex is a natural thing. If you outlaw sex then you are by definition creating criminals, and you might as well name it for what it is: a law against certain groups of people. The act itself is merely the stick used to hit them with in a legal way.
- barrkel 7y agoPerhaps the continuing decline in the currency's value will give us an opportunity to see £50 notes more frequently. I don't think I've seen one more than twice in the past 12 years, and I get cash out less and less frequently.
- lavezzi 7y agoIt's because £50 notes have always been associated with fraud and money laundering, which has negative connotations for both users and merchants.
- jsty 7y agoPaying for something with £50 notes is a nerve-racking experience rivalled only by attempting to attempting to spend Scottish notes in England (I usually chicken out and just deposit them all at a bank)
- pidg 7y agoTop tip - if you find yourself with a Scottish note in England, use it in a self-checkout machine.
- dhruvrrp 7y agoI had a lot of trouble spending leftover Jersey pounds when i reached London. People didn’t even recognize the bills! I think a McDonalds ended up accepting them.
- gerdesj 7y agoIts nowhere near as bad as it was back in the '70s or so when some places devalued the other countries' Sterling by 10% before accepting it or flatly refused it. I've spend several eg Bank of Clydsdale £20 notes in pubs in southern England. I've also spent a fair bit of English Sterling up (proper) north with no problems. It doesn't help that there are five or so different banks in Scotland issuing notes with different designs, so to spot a dud you need to really know your stuff.
- 7y ago
- SimplyUseless 7y agoAlan Turing's achievements * Designed the programming of world's first commercial computer (Ferranti Mark 1) * Devised Turing Test, to test whether computer is capable of thinking like a huamn * Got an OBE for his wartime services * Inventor of Turing Machine. To this day, all stored-programme digital computers are modelled on this invention * Built the machine that helped in the breaking of the Enigma code used by the German forces. This was used to decode 2 messages per minutes * His work shortened the WW2 by atleast 2 years. * Alan was a member of the team which decoded the 'Fish' cipher, which was used towards the end of the war by the German High Command to transmit messages between Hitler and senior officers in the field.
- ETHisso2017 7y ago> His work shortened the WW2 by atleast 2 years. And was then pushed to suicide by the intelligence agencies of the country he saved hundreds of thousands of lives for.
- gurumeditations 7y agoFor the crime of being gay.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pilsetnieks 7y agoNo, it was just ordinary police and a court conviction that did that. The intelligence agencies likely knew about his orientation long before and did nothing about it - if anything, it was something that could be used to control him.
- roywiggins 7y agoModern computers aren't really based on the Turing machine idea any more than they're based on the Lambda calculus, and I think it's questionable that the early computers were intentionally modelled on it.
- WalterBright 7y ago
- Athas 7y agoIt's good that Turing gets put on a banknote - and about time. However, the concept art in that article is really ugly. I'm not that familiar with British banknotes - are they usually that messy looking? Every piece of text is in a different font, and it seems pretty vulgar to have a quote on the note at all. There's even drop shadows! It honestly looks like something I'd put together in Corel Draw in the mid-2000s.
- justinator 7y agoAnti counterfeiting measures, perchance?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jsty 7y ago> are they usually that messy looking? They don't really look much like that. See: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/current-banknotes https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/current-banknotes I'm hoping the fact that's just the concept art means it'll be reworked to appear more like the existing notes ...
- dmix 7y agoThat $5 pound note looks great, I love the white sides with the emblem of the notes in general. But the pattern remains, those bills are for the most part extremely dense and overflowing with information and layered graphics. Especially the existing $50 one which is crammed full of stuff. It's like someone came up with a list of ideas and said yes to all of them.
- hollerith 7y agoIf the design were more minimalist, they would be easier to counterfeit.
- 7y ago
- Causality1 7y agoAlan Turing deserves it, but do they deserve him? Few people have done so much for their country and afterwards been so thoroughly betrayed by it.
- benkarst 7y agoHe should be on the pound coin!
- chrisfinazzo 7y agoThe US needs some updating as well - see the kerfuffle about trying to get Harriet Tubman on the $20, which Trump nixed, because racism. He wanted to put her on a reissued $2 bill, but I'm not sure there's an appetite for that. Symbolism matters in this case, and Trump is clueless. I still like this concept from a while back: https://kottke.org/10/08/us-dollar-redesign https://kottke.org/10/08/us-dollar-redesign Replacing GW with Obama might be a bit contentious, but the rest of it seems solid.
- winter_blue 7y ago> https://kottke.org/10/08/us-dollar-redesign https://kottke.org/10/08/us-dollar-redesign Wow, that redesign is really impressive! I hope something like it gets adopted eventually.
- dijit 7y agoThat’s incredibly bold and ambitious. I kind of love it. It breaks a universal tradition that I didn’t consider before.
- winter_blue 7y agoHere's a link with pictures of all the redesigned notes: https://www.designboom.com/design/dowling-duncan-us-bank-note-designs/ https://www.designboom.com/design/dowling-duncan-us-bank-not...
- siggi_pop 7y agoBut are we ready for this yet!? Considering his sexual orientation, when it's only 2019!?
- doe88 7y agoWould be a good idea on many levels to follow suit and have Turing on an € bank note. His impact is universal.
- sneak 7y agoPerhaps all paper tape should be printed with regularly spaced perpendicular divider lines, too.
- armada651 7y agoThe € bank notes do not have historical figures on them. Only the coins have historical or royal figures on them depending on the country that minted them. If the UK had the euro they could put his face on their coins, but well... that's never going to happen anymore.
- imjasonmiller 7y agoI understand why you would say that, but that would be quite a big ask. There are only six bills, of which the design applies to 19 countries, and of which the United Kingdom is not a member. The bills feature fictitious imagery (at the time at least, as Tom Scott shows [1]) in order to avoid national bias. For those curious as to what could have been, many of the 44 design proposals from 1996 [2] did feature historical figures. 1. https://youtu.be/S9E1wsxOSzM https://youtu.be/S9E1wsxOSzM 2. http://www.coinsworld.eu/info/euro-banknotes-designs/ http://www.coinsworld.eu/info/euro-banknotes-designs/
- jstewartmobile 7y agoJohn Maynard Keynes homosexualed much more openly and aggressively than Turing ever could, yet for some reason, was spared the same fate. Pause to look around, and it becomes clear that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
- yakshaving_jgt 7y agoI wish it were also Rejewski et al. on the bill, the Polish mathematicians who originally cracked the Enigma about 8 years before they handed their work over to Turing.
- jibbit 7y agoHonestly it’s just embarrassing when you killed him.
- fattypouch 7y agoisabouttime
- aussieguy1234 7y agoThis man broke the enigma code, which helped win the war against the evil Nazis. He built early prototypes of the modern computer. Your computer might not be as powerful today, or even exist without his inventions. Funny how alt right/nazi idiots are using later versions of his technology to type out comments that seem to imply he's on the note simply because he was persecuted. But it's easy to see why Nazis hate him. He's not only gay, but he broke their "unbreakable" code. Maybe they'd have gone further in their war if it weren't for him?
- advertisehere 7y agoDon’t forget the mother of computer science. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace
- brailsafe 7y agoLove this, but damn they should get whoever is designing the Canadian bills to fix this one up.