New British £50 banknote honouring Alan Turing
The UK’s new £50 note has entered circulation on the 109th anniversary of the birth of its subject, the mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing. Initially announced two years ago, and unveiled back in March, the note is due to become available in bank branches and ATMs over the coming days.
Its arrival completes the Bank of England’s range of polymer notes, and the clock is ticking down to 30 September 2022, at which point the previous paper versions of the £20 and £50 notes cease to be legal tender (although it is expected that deposits using the older notes will be still be accepted.)
As for the £50 note itself, the photo of Turing was snapped in 1951 by photography studio Elliott and Fry. Also visible in the design is an image of the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE), as well as technical drawings for the Bombe, one of the tools used to break Enigma-enciphered messages in World War II.
A working reconstruction of the Turing-Welchman Bombe (below) is on display at The National Museum of Computing, which is showing off the new note alongside, as well as a Snapcode that will allow an Augmented Reality experience with the note.
Image: National Museum of Computing
Away from AR fun and games, ticker tape showing Turing’s date of birth in binary flows over the note and a mathematical table from his 1936 paper “On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem” [PDF] is visible.
Turing’s 1949 quote “This is only a foretaste of what is to come and only the shadow of what is going to be” is shown beneath his image. The signature on the note is from the visitor’s book at Max Newman’s house.
CEO of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), Dr Peter Thompson, said: “Alan Turing’s time at NPL and the development of the pilot ACE are an important part of NPL’s scientific history. Turing’s initial design was drawn up in 1945 and approved by the NPL in 1946. The computer ran its first program in 1950, after Turing had departed NPL for Manchester University.”
Thompson went on to thank the Bank of England for depicting Turing and the ACE on the note: “For any organisation, scientific or other, fostering a diverse and inclusive workforce creates an environment where innovation thrives and everybody feels safe and secure in their workplace.”
The appalling treatment of Turing himself, simply due to being gay and despite his astonishing and celebrated wartime efforts, is well-documented. Turing was persecuted by the state for his homosexuality and was convicted of gross indecency in 1952. He was found dead on 8 June 1954 from cyanide poisoning.
He was eventually granted a posthumous pardon in 2013 following an apology from the UK Prime Minister in 2009.
Speaking at Bletchley Park, Governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey said: “Placing him on this new banknote is a recognition of his contributions to our society, and a celebration of his remarkable life.”
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Header image: The Guardian
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Andy
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I won’t comment on Turing’s lifestyle choice, but his work at Bletchley Park was of immense importance to our war effort.
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Mark Tapley
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Hello Andy:
There would have been no War had the half Jew (mother Jenny Jerome “Jacobson”) alcoholic and War monger Churchill not been picked up by the Jew Focus Group who paid off his debts and set him to provoking another war with Germany. Just what Britain needed after losing 750,000 needlessly in the Anglo Zionist contrived meat grinder of WW1 from which it never recovered.
Really the new fiat note rather than honoring the sodomite Turing should have given the honors to Count Coudonove Kelergi, father of the new miscegenist Britain that has been successfully flooded with Africans and Pakistanis since the the war. Things will be much better now that those barbaric low I.Q. Europeans are replaced by the peaceful high I.Q Africans as is clearly evident in areas already culturally enriched by their magnanimous presence, such as Botswana, the Congo and Haiti. Detroit, Camden and East St Louis are also shining tributes of multicultural enrichment.
group to
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Andy
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Oh go away with your endless anti-Semitic rhetoric.
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Mark Tapley
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Hello Andy:
The result of Britain’s war effort as a result of the British elite’s commitment to the Zionist cause has been both astonishing and catastrophic. This amazing but long concealed narrative has been well hidden by the establishment but is now finally told in Docerty’s “Hidden History, The Secret Origins of The First World War.”
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Zoe Phin
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Didn’t some Poles do all the real work?
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Zoe Phin
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Turing is completely over-rated. If he wasn’t gay, he’d be unknown. People even claim he developed the first programming theory. Funny, the guy who invented the first programmable computer and programmed it never heard of him until much later.
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MattH
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Hi Zoe and readers.
Zoe, your statements here are back to front.
Turing’s contributions were suppressed because he was homosexual. Homosexuality was an imprisonable offence and the establishment at the time treated Turing as a “dirty little secret” as well as others suppressing his contributions to lessen focus on him to protect him from the legal consequences of his private life.
Turing made his contributions as so many did for the cause and a little acknowledgement in spite of his private life is probably quite fitting.
I look forward to reading from you some of the correlations between “space weather” and geothermal activity.
You gettem Zoe.
Matt
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Zoe Phin
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OK, I admit the guy deserves some credit. But he’s got something of a cult following which, I feel, is actually undeserved. His “lambda calculus” is just about the dumbest thing I’ve come accross to explain simple computer science patterns. Anyone who programs will naturally acquire all these things on their own anyway.
The guy is no Birkeland. That was an actual loss to science 🙂
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MattH
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” The pioneer’s work always tends to be forgotten when experience and routine later make everything seem easy and many of us in Hut 8 felt that the magnitude of Turing’s contribution was never fully realized by the outside world.”
Quote from Hugh Alexander who took over as the boss of Hut 8 when Turing went to the USA to work with (help) the Americans.
Big smile back you.
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Moffin
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Considered opinion suggests Turing’s work shortened the war by two years and he was later chemically castrated by a grateful nation.
Salem anybody?
Zoe Phin
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No no, someone who doesn’t study Turing will uncover the same things he did.
For example: The inventor of the first programmable computer, Karl Zuse, had no idea who Turing was.
It’s kind of like Watson and Crick. If Princeton wasn’t the first place to buy the best microscope at the time, the credit they received would’ve went to someone else.
MattH
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You are correct Zoe.
It is very, highly, extremely, likely that through analysis and logic two people can evolve the same solutions and technology independent of each other.
In Turing’s case, with the war on, cometh the hour, cometh the man.
Personal Question. Do you stand in front of a mirror and argue with yourself to keep in practice? (no malice meant)
Now. Which cosmic rays (energy) stir up the geothermal activity and how do they do it?
Enjoy your day.
Matt. Out.
itsme
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on another subject:
When is this full ‘digital’ money coming in?
(Lloyds claims it will be around 2025)
This new plastic money seems to be here to stay a while.
Surley they wouldn’t print (at our expense) a pile of new notes when they want to defunk in 4 years or so?
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